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​How to Build Your Own Kombucha SCOBY| ASBC Webinar​​​​​

Questions? Contact Bryan Mowry at ASBC

Webinar Summary

Craft beer seeing only percentage level growth year over year, many craft brewers are diversifying their product lines into various alternative beverages including hard and NA kombucha. The ASBC Alternative Beverage Taskforce aspires to support craft brewers as they enter these new alternative beverage spaces. Hard and non-alcoholic Kombucha represents an enormous and rapidly growing market segment in the US (from $1.8 Billion in 2020 to over $4 Billion in 2021), drawing in craft breweries to kombucha production. However, kombucha production differs significantly from beer production, involving a diversity of yeast and bacteria (including some potent beer spoilage organisms) with anaerobic and aerobic stages.  This webinar will help attendees understand how these diverse microbes impact the kombucha production process and final product, as well as how to build​ your own kombucha Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) can give you control.

ATTENDEES WILL LEARN:​

• Introduce research profiling what the typical kombucha Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) looks like in terms of which yeast and bacteria are present and when/where.
• Learn what organisms you need if you want a SCOBY pellicle to form vs. want to avoid forming a SCOBY pellicle mass.
• Understand how the very specific conditions of a fermentation system (tea, sugar source, oxygen availability, temperature) will affect what organisms will become dominant.
• Be able to explain how to isolate and incorporate specific bacteria and yeast into your custom SCOBY to control the production process and final product characteristics.​

About the Presenters

​​ Eric Childs ​KBBK Consultation

Eric Childs has been a pioneer in the commercial kombucha industry for 15 years. Founder of Kombucha Brooklyn which was the largest SCOBY growing operation at the time. He is the founder of KBBK Consultants which has supported more than 40 commercial kombucha operations around the world and is the co-author of Kombucha! The Amazing Probiotic Drink that Heals and Energizes and Fermentation and Home Brewing.

​Dr. Chris Curtin Oregon State University

Dr. Chris Curtin is an Associate Professor of Fermentation Microbiology at Oregon State University. He has published 80 peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and articles during his research career at OSU and before that at The Australian Wine Research Institute. The Curtin lab uses ‘omics tools to understand the role of yeasts and bacteria in fermented beverages such as beer, wine, and kombucha, where despite harboring a core set of the same species, the outcomes are quite different.