fermentation science – Page 2

16Sep 2018

I Burned a SCOBY

But just a little bit.

Took the crocheted SCOBY mat home to dry it out, and kept it overnight in a 120° F oven on parchment paper to dry it out.

The thicker side didn’t quite incorporate itself with the hemp fiber, owing I think to the fact that the crocheted piece was suspended slightly below the high tea/sugar mark.

In some places though, it seems as though the SCOBY really integrated with the mat.

The finished piece has an interesting flexibility because of the crocheted core.

I decided to try using SNO-SEAL, which is beeswax and some sort of solvent, to waterproof the mat. I melted some in an old pan on an outdoor stove, and plunged the SCOBY mat into it.

As I was turning off the flame, the pan caught fire, which was no big deal, and I extinguished it by putting a piece of metal over it. I didn’t realize, however that the mat itself was on fire, but was able to put it out quickly. I then placed the whole business on parchment paper and into the oven at 120° again for about 20 minutes, then buffed it out with some paper towels.

It definitely sheds water.

Our next experiments include creating magnetic SCOBY by incorporating iron filings into some fruit leather mush, and creating “leather” bracers for an upcoming fashion show.

04Sep 2018

SCOBYLED – Light Emitting SCOBY

by Zack ⋅ Leave a Comment

Inspired by the way the fruit leather SCOBY catches the light, we decided to see about embedding LED in a batch of mush. Using the SCOBY from the kombucha of least resistance, we blended up a new batch.

As the prior batch took so very long to dehydrate, we tried out a yogurt cheese maker, jamming it full of mush and letting it sit overnight to see about driving off as much liquid as possible before air or oven drying.

A lot of kombucha collected in the bottom after 24 hours. Meanwhile, we prepared four LED, coating the posts in dialectric grease, and using multiple nested layers of heat shrink tubing in an effort to prevent the highly acidic SCOBY mush from corroding the LED legs.

We embedded the LED into the mush, and packed it in all around them. Not sure if the material will capture the LED, or shrink in such a way that they will be easily pulled out, but we’re hoping for the former. After the material dries some, the hope is that it will be a coherent block, which can be removed from the vessel for additional drying.

03Sep 2018

The Continuing Saga of SCOBY Leather

by Zack ⋅ 3 Comments

The blended SCOBY fruit roll-up leather experiment is finally more or less dry. It took hours and hours in a 120 degree Fahrenheit oven before the water was driven off, and the resulting leather seems strong and beautifully semi-translucent.

Not sure what exactly we’ll do with it, other than maybe subdivide it for various experiments. Meanwhile, I took a look at the SCOBY net experiment, and was surprised to find that a nice pellicle had formed above the net, and that it had grown through the net at the edges.

I decided to flip it over to see if another layer might grow on top, and then we’ll maybe press it flat to dry, encasing the hemp net between the layers of leather?

For future experiments, it would probably be best to find a way to suspend the net right at the surface of the tea and sugar mixture, so that the pellicle becomes more integrated into the net. Maybe a purpose built, adjustable frame that can be moved up or down to account for liquid loss?

29Aug 2018

SCOBY Mush to SCOBY Leather

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

Inspired by this process for turning SCOBY into fruit leather…

…we decided to prototype a process to turn some mature SCOBY into mush, dry it in a form, and look at the material properties of the finished product. We borrowed a blender and rinsed and blended up a not insignificant quantity of SCOBY, adding a little bit of water to keep things moving.

We weren’t able to find exactly the right vessel, so we improvised, building little dam made of wood to get to the size we wanted.

The material is surprisingly coherent, and the dam acted as a bit of a liquid separator.

The form filled, we stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit (the lowest the oven in the nutrition classroom will go), and it’s gently baking even as I’m writing this.

In related news, we modified the fermentation chamber, adding a heat mat to see if we can improve the growth rate of the pellicle by increasing the temperature a bit. The mat has a fixed temp, and as it turns out that temp is too high, so we’ll need to look into adding a thermostat to reign that in a bit. Eventually, we plan to construct an Arduino-based, temperature controlled growing chamber that will will log data to a Web-accessible database, but that’s a few weeks out.

27Aug 2018

SCOBY Net

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

Boiled up the hemp twine crocheted mat (which when wet smells strongly of goat)…

…then used the t-shirt press to flatten it out…

…and suspended it at the surface of a fresh batch of kombucha.

We covered the whole business in a cloth, and put it into the brewing shelf. Not sure at all what might happen, but the hope is that the bacteria and yeast will colonize the twine and produce cellulose all around, encasing the mat in SCOBY goodness.

23Aug 2018

SCOBY Harvest

by Zack ⋅ 2 Comments

We decided to harvest and dry one of the big SCOBYs today.

As we removed it from the tea, the SCOBY separated into two layers, which we washed and rinsed.

The top layer was thick and uneven and prone to tearing as we arranged it on a piece of cardboard to dry.

The bottom layer was thin and unblemished and surprisingly strong. It’s barely visible on the plywood.

We mixed up some sugar water, and added it to both the now empty grow chamber, and to the undisturbed second batch. We’ll wait a week to harvest and cure the SCOBY growing therein.

01Aug 2018

Big Batch of Booch

by Zack ⋅ 3 Comments

Given the exciting potential for using SCOBY as a makerspace material, we spent the day brewing up a big batch of kombucha to grow large SCOBY sheets. Using an electric water bath canner, we boiled 5.25 gallons of water, then cooled it down using Max’s wort chiller.

We divided the water into two large plastic bins that CJ (student and makerspace employee) cleaned and sterilized for the project.

In a separate pot, we brewed 8 quarts of tea, then added the sugar, and divided that between the two bins. The temperature was a little high – 91 degrees Fahrenheit or so – so we waited a loooong time while it cooled before adding some finished kombucha.

In the meantime, Clarity (student and makerspace employee) quickly and skillfully embroidered this SCOBY cozy to cover the batch while it ferments.

We put the two big batches to bed in a dark and warm place to ferment for the next couple of weeks. With any luck, we’ll have two big pieces of SCOBY to work with right around the start of the semester.

While we had all the supplies out, we decided to make a batch of kombucha of least resistance. We took ordinary tap water, poured in some sugar and shook it up, and then added a tea bag for a short while, removed it, and then added to each jar an amount of finished kombucha, and in one jar, the unused SCOBYs from the first kombucha leather batch.

We’ll see if and how well this low-effort kombucha works out. Throughout the day, we took notes about how we can scale the activity up for some fall workshops as part of our fermentation science initiative. Brett (student and makerspace employee) is working on plans for a temperature-controlled fermentation chamber, so we’ll be able to add some microcontrollers to monitor and control our ferments, with the goal of producing and lot of SCOBY for lots of experimentation.

31Jul 2018

Laser Cut Kombucha Leather

by Zack ⋅ 1 Comment

Ran some laser tests on the kombucha leather. Specifically, we wanted to test raster and vector engraving, and vector cutting. We used the Natural -> Paper -> Construction Paper setting in the laser driver, and cooked up a test file using our mascot Nova.

The material wasn’t perfectly flat, so the raster engrave worked, but inconsistently. The vector engrave left a crisp line on the material, but it could be easily scratched away with a fingernail.

The vector cut worked well, the edges crisp and clean. The surface of the material is textured in an interesting way, and really resembles skin.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to start some kombucha in larger vessels – we’re going to need a lot of SCOBY!

30Jul 2018

Fermentation Science, SCOBY Leather, and Makerspace Brew

by Zack ⋅ 4 Comments

As part of an effort to integrate biology and biohacking into our makerspace offerings, we’ve been working on a fermentation science initiative, which will hopefully lead to workshops, activities, courses, and certificates. Fermentation science sits at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including Biology, Chemistry, and Nutrition, and with the addition of Internet of Things technologies for monitoring and automation, dovetails nicely with our ongoing aquaponics and smart garden efforts.

We’ve started experimenting with kombucha, with the goal of exploring the kombucha SCOBY as a renewable and novel makerspace material, inspired by Scihouse’s SCOBY leather experiments.

We’ve been fostering some kombucha SCOBYs…

and eventually grew one out in a small rectangular vessel. We knocked together an acrylic drying rack on the laser cutter, and set the SCOBY to dry.

It’s a little rough, but it is after all a version 1 prototype.

We’re planning to develop an incubation box so that we can manipulate temperature variables, and have talked about all kinds of basic science sorts of experiments to see how far we can take the material. We’re also developing workshops around lactic acid fermentation, and have created some nice krauts and ferments over the past month, including this red cabbage. Lots of opportunities to science this up too, and to monitor, tweak, and manipulate variables.

Our eventual goal is to stand up a brewing program that should integrate nicely with the college’s viticulture efforts. We’ve got some work to do to get that up on wheels, but we’re nibbling around the edges by, for instance, growing hops. We repurposed some scaffolding – most recently the art gallery for our Making Social Change laser cut stencil project – as a hops yard.

Despite some ups and downs with the automatic watering, one of the plants is flowering! Pro tip: raw hops cones are incredibly bitter.

Stay tuned for Innovation Center Makerspace MicroTechno Brew.

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Tag Archives: Fermentation Science

I Burned a SCOBY

SCOBYLED – Light Emitting SCOBY

The Continuing Saga of SCOBY Leather

SCOBY Mush to SCOBY Leather

SCOBY Net

SCOBY Harvest

Big Batch of Booch

Laser Cut Kombucha Leather

Fermentation Science, SCOBY Leather, and Makerspace Brew

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