If you make kombucha at home, chances are you have SCOBYs…lots of them. This awesome organism is the key component of making kombucha and is responsible for adding all those wonderful probiotics to what is essential sweet tea. Well here are some great ways to use up your extra SCOBYs you may not have thought of.
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If you are interested in starting your own kombucha, check out my post here. It is SO easy to get up and running you’ll have delicious homemade kombucha ready in just days. Feeling adventurous? Flavor and second brew your kombucha and make many fun drinks.
What are the benefits of SCOBYs?
A SCOBY is an acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. It is a live organism that turns sweet tea into kombucha by eating the sugars and leaving behind probiotics and live active cultures. If you aren’t brewing your own, you should definitely check out how easy it is to brew your own kombucha.
Interestingly, SCOBYs are also edible! And will provide many of the same benefits of kombucha. The probiotics have been linked to healthy living such as improved gut health, improving diabetes, preventing gout and even reducing cancer risks.
Related content: How to get started brewing kombucha
Funny thing about SCOBYs is they look weird. There is no doubt about that. They’re fleshy colored and textured. They sometimes have little brown bits around called “yeasties” which is just a build up of yeast on the SCOBY. It won’t hurt you or the brew but they don’t taste good.
SCOBY Skin Care
Did you know that SCOBYs are so amazing that they can help with wounds? The cellulose structure of the bacteria and yeast combine together to make a strong bond that can help a wound seal up. It’s really an amazing organism that can help you in so many ways.
Most people take the SCOBY and blend it before adding different things and applying it to your skin or face. The most common use is as a face mask for your own spa day. A SCOBY has natural probiotic properties that can be helpful to the skin.
SCOBY as food
You can make SCOBY into sushi as a meat replacer and even add a little sugar and make SCOBY candy. A SCOBY can even be ground up and mixed with applesauce for an awesome fruit leather.
There is even such a thing as SCOBY jerky. Because of the fleshy, thickness of SCOBYs they make an excellent meat replacer. One of the most popular uses of SCOBY is as dog treats, kind of like a raw hide.
What else to do with SCOBYs?
The nicest thing you can do, is give it away! In fact, you may end up with so many you’ll be begging people to take them. Be sure to include a little home tea with the SCOBY as it will need it to brew properly in a new home.
Also you can compost SCOBYs. They can just go right into the compost pile and will do wonders for the microbes living there. The living organism is great for the soil and will definitely break down easily. The bacteria and yeast work well with the undigested kitchen scraps and leaves making wonderful compost to amend your garden.
Related content: Kombucha flavors
Finally, of course, you can keep all your delightful SCOBY babies. If you are thinking of starting another batch or trading out, you can have a SCOBY hotel and store lots of them. You can keep them happy in this way for a long time. If you keep a SCOBY hotel, be sure to refresh them with fresh sweet tea every week or so. You don’t need a lot, just about a cup or two to keep the SCOBYs happy.
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