This disproves our hypothesis that control tea will be the sweetest.

Aim: To find out how the type of sugar affect the growth of scoby's

Hypothesis: Scoby will grow best in the control set up, which is white sugar.

2. While the tea is still hot, add 1-2 teaspoons of white sugar. However, be careful not to burn yourself with the boiling tea. Mix until the sugar is dissolved, then cool completely to room temperature 

3. Pour the tea into the jar with the scoby until 80% filled and cover the jar opening with a cloth and secure the cloth with rubber band

4. Keep the jar away from direct sunlight in a cool and dry area of 20°C -25°C

5. Pour away most of the old tea and add a new batch every 4-6 week 

White cane sugar was purchased. It is the control sugar of our setups and white sugar is the most typical and basic kind of sugar.

Pure honey was brought from home. It is an independent variable of our experiment. Honey contains a high amount of sugar content so we wanted to find out if that is beneficial for the growth of scoby.

Brown sugar brought from home. It is another independent variable of our experiment. We had brown sugar available at home, so we thought that it would be convenient for us to investigate on it as well. 

Palm sugar was purchased. Articles on growing scoby did not recommend palm sugar as a sugar to grow healthy scoby. We decided to investigate why this was the case.

Our second modification is that we added more sugar into the 4 jars with different variables, as when initially we only put 4.25ml of sugar per cup of tea, our scoby were not growing thicker, and instead became thinner. 

When the sugar level of the tea is low, the scoby will not grow well and will grow thinly instead, and so will not be able to make the tea acidic enough, which in turn causes a higher pH level, and thus a higher risk of mould growing on top of the scoby culture.

Honey enhances the acids in Kombucha, which may be why no mould had grown on the scoby in the honey jar. White sugar ferments scoby because the yeasts can easily break the white sugar down into glucose and fructose and thus into beneficial acetic and gluconic acid, which may be why no mould had grown in the scoby in the control jar.

A new batch of tea was added, as it has been around a month since the scoby was given to us. Scoby sank when the new tea was added as it was disturbed by the tea.

12th July, Term 3 week 2

We separated the scoby culture into 2 different jars for the scoby to be able to grow more, as we have many variables. 

15th July, Term 3 week 3 (no pictures are attached)

Our mistake: We added different amounts of sugar into each of the jars, which caused the sugar level in our jars to be different, we realised that this will cause our data testing results to be inconsistent.

16th July, Term week 3

After realising our mistake, we redid our experiment and added the same amount of sugar into the tea, before pouring into each of the jars. Afterwards, we realised another mistake, which is the different amount of tea in each of the jars. We immediately rectified the mistake and made the amount of tea each jar contained to be equal. 

22nd July, Term 3 week 3

As our scoby didn't grow any thicker, we decided to add more sugar into each of their jars, from the original 4.25ml per jar to 15 ml per jar. We did not pour out any tea but added extra tea (about ¼ cup) with 3.75ml of sugar to each of our jar.

25th July, Term 3 week 4
New layers of scoby are forming in every jar as more sugar was added in to jars.

1st August, Term 3 week 5

Scoby in the 4 jars are growing thicker, signalling that there is still enough sugar for the scoby to grow.

7th August, Term 3 week 6

The 4 scoby in the jars did not grow much, and the scoby in the palm sugar jar sank. However, a very thin layer was growing on top of the jar. There was a foreign thing in the palm sugar scoby, so we removed it, but damaged the scoby, which explains the creases and the hole.

14th August, Term 3 week 7

 The control and honey scoby are doing fine, but the brown sugar and palm sugar scoby have mould growing on the top layers. This can be due to the insufficient amount of sugar in the jars, which affected the scoby’s growth negatively because Scoby needs sugar to survive. Therefore, as the scoby is not healthy, it will not be able to make the tea acidic so the mould would not be killed, which have caused to grow. On the following day, we went to the data collection and found out the brown sugar and palm sugar tea are of higher pH levels than lower sugar levels than the control and honey jars. 

Term 3 Week 8 (no photos are attached)

The control and honey tea got murkier as time went by, and the palm sugar scoby sunk on 20 August, the honey scoby sunk on 23 August, while the control scoby sunk on 24 August. The brown sugar scoby is still floating, but is completely covered in mould with a thin layer of white powdery substance on the TOP of the scoby. 

Term 3 Week 9 (no photos attached)

The scoby in the control, honey and palm sugar jar remained at the bottom, while the brown sugar scoby remained floating on top. The control and honey tea got murkier, while the brown sugar and palm sugar tea remained as murky, and the tea was darker and murkier in the brown sugar and palm sugar jars than the control and honey jars.

Term 3 Week 10

The photos were taken after the scoby was separated from the tea, to observe the clarity and colour of the tea in different jars. The separation of the tea from the scoby from the jar into a cup caused bubbles formed on the top of some teas. As seen from the pictures, the colour of the tea from the control and honey jars are lighter than that of the brown sugar and palm sugar jars.