How to Store Your Kombucha Culture

If you want to keep a back up culture safely away, if you're going on vacation, or if you just need a break from brewing, you have several options.

• If you're only going away for a couple of weeks, brew a batch like your normally would before you leave. When you come back the tea may be over-fermented and very acidic, but you can use this as your starter tea. And just something to remember if you're doing this: the SCOBY just needs enough sugar/O2 to survive/feed on.
• Refrigerate your kombucha mushroom in a glass jar with some unflavored kombucha tea. Or kick-start the brewing process for several days to get the pH down, and refrigerate the mushroom in its brewing container.
  -This will make your kombucha culture dormant. It won't be completely inactive, but the SCOBY will be active at a very slow rate, and it can keep this way for months.
  -I recommend keeping the lid loosely covered so that CO2 doesn't build up and so the top doesn't pop off.
  -Consider giving the SCOBY some fresh air/oxygen by opening the lid every now and then. If the kombucha has become/smells really acidic and the SCOBY has been in the fridge for awhile, I sometimes add a little sweet tea to the kombucha (sweet tea ratio: 1 quart water:1 tsp (4 g) loose-leaf tea:1/4 cup (50 g) sugar) to give the yeasts something to feed on.
  -Refrigeration is the most common method of storing SCOBYs.
  -However: when you start brewing again, you need to remember that the TEMPERATURES NEED TO BE THE SAME for the sweet tea and the SCOBY, because hot temperatures can kill the mushroom. The easiest way to do this is to let your hot sweet tea solution cool down overnight to room temperature, while letting the culture that used to be in the fridge warm up overnight to room temperature.
  -When you start brewing again, it may also take a few cycles for your SCOBY to kick back into full gear.
• It's not recommended to freeze your kombucha culture but it is possible:-It is recommended to use the "fast-freeze" setting of your freezer so the SCOBY will be frozen ASAP. If your culture is frozen too slowly, crystals may form which may damage the culture's cells.