Speaking of impairments to food-grade SCOBY production, the SCOBY pellicle is a wonderful breeding ground for fruit flies (or whatever those little flies are). Just leave the cheesecloth off your SCOBY jar, and soon enough the flies will appear.
I raised many generation of flies (in the interest of science). With careful observation, you can see several phases of the flies’ life cycle: egg hatching, worm growing, fly emerging.
No, I did not drink the SCOBY fluid from these experiments.
Update: I also experimented with drying and reviving SCOBYs. They are highly conservative of moisture: fluid beneath a SCOBY pellicle will take months to dry up, even in a uncovered wide-mouth bowl in a dry environment. The pellicle slowly shrinks, becoming protectively hard on the outside; the inside retains precious moisture and remains viable for a surprisingly long time.
