What do I need to know about containers? And what sort of 'lid' do you use? My friend is using a paper towel, which I don't generally buy, but will if need be.

Glass or ceramic containers are recommended (metal is apparently Very Bad). I bought a 1-gallon glass Anchor Hocking cracker jar at Target for $5-6. As a "lid" I use a paper coffee filter (the basket shape, not the cone shape), just because we have them in abundance. I believe you can use cloth that doesn't have a super-tight weave.

This is the website I check first if I have questions (and the page linked is the "recipe" that I follow, with one exception: instead of 4-6 bags of black tea, I use 5 bags of black tea and 2 bags of a fruit tea [Celestial Seasonings berry zinger], because I like the slight fruit taste it imparts [but it makes my SCOBYs pink, which is hilarious): [link]

t edit I have never had a fruit fly problem, even when our indoor compost collector attracted fruit flies (or perhaps they were so drawn to the compost collector that that's the reason they avoided the kombucha). I did, however, have a SCOBY go moldy *while* it was brewing over the winter. But that's the first time I had a mold issue in literally 2 years.

Uh, I'm a kombucha dork and will talk about it a lot if prompted. So hit me up with any questions. I use the cheap store-brand sugar, and TJs brand Irish breakfast tea. Oh, and plain old tap water. And it all turns out pretty well despite my non-fancy ingredients.

When it's ready, I don't bottle mine in special bottles; I just dump it into a big glass pitcher and put it in the fridge (where it WILL begin to grow a wee jellyfish-like creature at the bottom of the pitcher if I don't drink it in less than a week; I just strain out the creature, throw it in the compost bin, and keep drinking it). I don't do secondary fermentation because I am lazy and impatient and want to drink it as soon as the first fermentation is finished.

The SCOBY is creepy cool.

My friend pointed out that it feels like a placenta...for which I would not have a frame of reference. It's much, much more dense than I would have suspected.

Do you keep your cracker jar in a cupboard or in the open?

My friend puts hers up in the highest cupboard. She needs a step stool to get to it. Not optimal, to my way of thinking.

Did you know that you can dehydrate your scobys and give them to Kato?

My friend gave me one for Cagney, but I want to do some research before I do that.

I'm sorry, Bonny. I don't remember. I gave the directions with the company name to a friend when I shared the starter. It was pretty high up in th Google results for "keifer starter", if I recall correctly.

It's much, much more dense than I would have suspected.

It is! It can be almost leathery.

Do you keep your cracker jar in a cupboard or in the open?

We have a pantry that was built off the back of the kitchen (by "pantry" I mean something that's maybe as big as 1 1/2 phone booths -- not big at all). It's not on the HVAC system, so in the winter it can get cold (olive oil will get thick and goopy and cloudy, for instance) and in the summer it gets warm. In the summer that means that my kombucha will brew in 7 days or less because of the temperature, and in the winter it can take 3 weeks.

I set it on the floor of the pantry, despite the fact that that's the coldest in the winter, because that's where it won't get bumped/disturbed. (And there is NO ROOM on any of the shelves for it. There's barely any room to put new groceries.)

So the answer to "in a cupboard or in the open" is...both-ish. The pantry is big enough that air circulates freely, which the kombucha needs. (Uh, also, we have no cupboards. Literally, none.)

Did you know that you can dehydrate your scobys and give them to Kato?

I did know that! And since I end up with extras after a while, I just compost them, so I thought about dehydrating them for Kato. But then it occurred to me that it's a big pancake of bacteria, and...wouldn't it give him the runs? When people are new to drinking kombucha, it's recommended to not drink a lot all at once, because your body can have a detox reaction (healing crisis). I'd be afraid that would happen to Kato if he had a dried SCOBY. So I just compost them. They make wonderful compost.

Hil, did the rejuvelac taste nice?

I only tasted a tiny bit of it. It tasted kind of lemony, I guess. I was using it as an ingredient in a vegan cheese experiment. (There was a vegan cheese cookbook that came out a year or two ago that, unlike most of the vegan cheese recipes out there, actually fermented the cheese to get the right tanginess, rather than using lemon juice or vinegar to approximate it like most recipes do. I've just tried one of them so far -- planning on trying some more this summer, now that I've got some free time. My first experiment also showed that my food processor is nowhere near powerful enough to make almonds smooth, and my blender can do it only in tiny batches, so I'm saving up to get a fancy schmancy new blender with a motor measured in horsepower.)

I am scared of all this talk of jellyfish like creatures and leathery placenta. I do not want to drink things with jellyfish or placenta!

I can see your reticence meara, but the end result really is yummy and good for you.

Steph, I have just begun the healing crisis portion of the program JUST as I've run out of the sample my friend gave me. Now I need to lay off until I get all my equipment together and start brewing. Thus, actual healing is taking a hiatus.

The location issue may be my biggest problem. I understand the need for circulated air, but except for a corner of the counter top, I'm not sure where I can keep it.

I also read something about needed to keep kombucha and kefir cultures segregated. Sort of made them sound like the Sharks and Jets.

Hil, I can highly recommend the Vitamix lite version available at Costco. Of course, it was a gift, so I didn't spend for it. It's super strong...or at least strong enough for me.

Hil, I can highly recommend the Vitamix lite version available at Costco. Of course, it was a gift, so I didn't spend for it. It's super strong...or at least strong enough for me.

What I've been planning on getting is the cheapest Vitamix available on Amazon. I've got an Amazon credit card, which gives me points back whenever I use it, so I've been saving those up. I'm at about $220 worth of points now, which I think I might say is close enough so that I can just pay the rest of the price, since it's summer now and I've got the time to try stuff like cheese-making.

Good plan, Hil.

In addition to being giddy about kombucha, I'm a bundle of nerves over my surrogate mom visiting me today.

She is flying from Santa Cruz to DC and staying with me until Sunday, when I deliver her to an event in Rockville.

It seems she isn't in the best shape, but she IS 88 and full of doing whatever she wants to do.

I sincerely thought I'd never see her face again, so I'm thrilled, but I'm terrified I might break her!

I don't have any safety rails in my bathroom, so I'm thinking of renting a shower chair. I don't know though!

I'm literally chewing my nails...which I have not done in ages.