Got my live SCOBY in the mail today. Was worried with regional temperatures in the freezing digits of the thermomenter.

The SCOBY was of excellent size and in pristine condition for a starter. It's surrounding liquid was exactly the color and odor one would expect from well fermented Kombucha tea. No off odors that shouldn't have been there.

Made the starter tea as per directed on packaging for this particular culture and within 30 minutes of introducing the SCOBY and ALL of it's accompaning starter liquid to the tea, fermentation had already begun with a floating SCOBY and tiny bubbles forming on the glass and lifting the tinier sediments in the jar.

Although this is my first Kombucha culture purchased from Fermentaholics and has not finished its initial ferment in its new home, I have no doubts that it will produce excellent Kombucha. If it doesn't turn out that way, I will update in a week and let folks know.
The packaging was excellent and the "use by" date on the inner SCOBY bag was over 7 months in the future from today, so supposedly there was plenty of time left before SCOBY would diminish by ageing in a sealed juice bag.

******UPDATE**********
It has been 5 days since my original post and woild like to report that I had about 2 cups of tea mix that would not go into my fermenting jar with the scoby, after mixing it with the rest and drawing it back out on the first day with a few bits of floaties from the original mix, I put it in a smaller separate jar next to the bigger tank... Behold, by day 5 I actually have a 2nd new SCOBY forming all on its own separate from the original Mother SCOBY jar. At least the SCOBY I received (can't speak for anyone else) was quite robust and healthy!

Worth the money. The piece it came with was sufficient to get a gallon started in a week, and the new SCOBY more than doubled in size from the original. I'm fermenting a gallon and a half this go round. The first batch so far was amazing. Added different fruits to each bottle in the 2nd fermentation . Way better than store bought for sure and super easy to deal with, as long as you love having a constant supply of kombucha. PE..The first bottle I strained the fruit out thinking I'd rather not get fruit in my mouth with every sip, but the second bottle I tried I kept the fruit in. Way better that way!! The fruit only gets into my mouth when I want it to. I wait till all the tea is gone and I'm left with very yummy fruit to eat. Totally rocks.
Good score from the Fermentalholics...I recommend them.

UPDATE 3/8/18: Still going strong. I'm swimming in extra scobys now. Very very healthy starter scoby from this seller, can't compliment this company enough on the high quality of their product. Since I wrote my original review, I've seen a lot of other people's scobys and they are UGLY. Very thin layers, stained dark brown, with gross black yeast strings, sitting in blackish brown liquid. SUPER gross looking. Fermentaholic's scoby is nothing like that - they are clean, healthy looking, creamy colored and thick. Mine doesn't make many yeast strings at all, just some sediment on the bottom. All my baby scobys have turned out to be beautiful and healthy looking as well, just follow the instructions included exactly. I've also read that using green tea instead of black tea helps keep your scoby from getting stained and becoming darker, so my typical mixture is 50/50 green tea and black tea (3 green tea bags, 3 black if you use the proportions in the instructions). However, my best batch yet was when I used 100% green tea (6 green tea bags) - it was pleasantly floral and sweet, with just a hint of tartness, not the aggressive sour and tannic flavor of typical kombucha. From my research, green tea works just as well as black for a scoby food source, and my scobys have been much prettier when I do batches with green tea, so try it!

Last thing, I've been making so much kombucha that once in awhile I won't have time to refresh the liquid and a batch will ferment too long and become kombucha vinegar. It's not necessary to throw this out at all - there's tons of recipes online that substitute apple cider vinegar for kombucha vinegar, and I've found my over fermented kombucha to be super handy when I need vinegar in a pinch (ie. salad dressing). This may freak some people out, but I've even tried using my kombucha vinegar as a hair rinse (diluted down with cooled chamomile tea), and it worked amazingly as a clarifying shampoo and even took care of some flakes that I've been getting from the dry winter weather. If you have color treated hair, it will strip out your color. However, I really liked that my hair was so clean, volumized, and shiny the next day. I actually got several compliments about having a "hair model" day. For my method: Brew a cup of chamomile. Drink a third of the cup as you wait for it to cool. When cool, replace the third with your kombucha vinegar (1 part kombucha vinegar, 2 parts chamomile tea). After shampooing, dump this on your head, concentrating on the scalp (careful, it might get in your eyes and ears). Rinse well (I rinsed several times because I was afraid I'd smell like vinegar later). Condition as you would normally. While your hair is wet, the kombucha smell might follow you around, but it dissipated when it dried (I had several people smell me to confirm).

Best of luck with your kombucha!! If you're buying it here, you made the right choice. I can confirm it's an excellent source.

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Oh this worked out great!! I read the reviews here that said these scobys come with a full cup of the kombucha starter liquid so that when you add it into your gallon of sweet tea, it will end up the perfect ph (instead of you having to add vinegar in to adjust the ph like other kombucha sets on Amazon that don't come with enough of the liquid). As a first time kombucha brewer, I was willing to pay a little extra to ensure the ph was correct from the get go, and I'm happy to report back that this worked great. I highly recommend buying your scobys from here if you are a beginner like I was. Just to be safe, I did test the ph with some ph test strips and it was in the perfect range! Instructions are very clear and simple. My scoby was about the size of a hockey puck. I could actually see several layers already existing in the scoby I got in the mail and from what I read, I'm sure it was probably thick enough to separate the layers and give to a friend. I didn't since I was new at this and didn't want to mess with it. It definitely moved around in my gallon jug in the first week - some days floating on top, some days stuck to the bottom, some days drifting on it's side. You're dealing with something that's alive, people. Just let it do it's thing. After only one fermentation cycle, I saw the beginnings of a new scoby forming at the top of my jug so this culture does seem very healthy. I was impressed. My first batch tasted about right to bottle after about 10 days (I live in San Francisco so fermentation times might be longer since it's a little cooler here).

Started brewing homemade Kombucha with this kit. The instructions seemed to conflict with some principles I've read elsewhere (particularly the vinegar part, which seems to be a disputed topic), but it's great starter liquid and a good enough scoby to get started. I ended up having the right ph with just the starter and tea, so no harm no foul. My first batch produced a pretty weak baby scoby that was about as thick as a crepe, but the Kombucha that came from it was great and the second batch is already looking stronger.

You might do yourself a favor by starting with black tea for your first batch, rather than 50:50 green and black like I did. It seems like you can't go wrong either way though. It seems to be a stout enough setup to get things going.

I am very satisfied with my SCOBY from Fermentaholics. I did a bit of research beforehand on how to brew Kombucha The Big Book of Kombucha: Brewing, Flavoring, and Enjoying the Health Benefits of Fermented Tea and I followed the directions on the package for setting up my first brew. Success! As you can see from my attached photo, I have a nice healthy brew and a brand new baby SCOBY forming (that is twice the size of the mother!) Very happy with Fermentaholics product for getting me started.