SCOBY Do

I guess 'Morphology' is as good a place as any for this.

I've had my ginger beer production line on the go moreorless continuously for nearly a year now. It's a simple process - 500g 'raw' cane sugar dissolved in a warmed pan of water, plus 50g of well-steeped sliced root ginger and juice of two lemons, both strained, and left to cool. Bottle 5L of the last fermented batch from a tapped glass demijohn, then add the cooled fresh wort to the dregs, add water to fill and leave to ferment for 5 days or so. Now and then, a good wash through and restart with fresh yeast (Lalvin EC-1118 Saccharomyces cerevisiae ex bayanus - a commercial champagne yeast).

After a couple of previously discussed teething issues associated with undesirable additives in the sugar, no real issues. A mildly alcoloholic thirstquencher to see me off to the land of Nod each night.

Then instead of the usual mucky froth on top of last week's batch, I got a smooth, gelatinous mat that I presumed to be a possible SCOBY, which I binned. Today's batch ;; same thing, but this time I've taken samples for experimentation (leaving a good part in the demijohn with the new fermentation batch).

AFAIK a traditional Ginger Beer Plant contains S. florentinus and Lactobacillus hilgardii plus (possibly) an acetic acid bacterium (AAB) which I'd really prefer not to have. Though I have spotted the odd suspicious looking tiny midge fluttering around the demijohn.

Not actually noticed any significant change in taste yet, so I'm quite puzzled as to what exactly is going on.

Edited 49 minutes ago49 min by sethoflagos
erroneous declension