As I recently learned from the Hobby Goblin Newsletter run by my colleague Tim Barribeau, you can apparently take that big gross SCOBY embryo thing from your kombucha and use it to produce a vegan leather substitute:
Short version, you grow a scoby in a rectangular container, get it nice and thick, and then dry it out. And you have something approximating "leather". You can also use oils to try and make it stiffer and more water resistant, as from what I gather it otherwise starts to disintegrate when wet. It seems you can also darken the stuff by heating it.
Which is good, because the best way I can describe how it looks is halfway between fried chicken skins and fruit leather. Like the remains of molting. Translucent beef jerky ass material. It somehow looks more like skin than leather made from actual skins.
Now I know. And knowing is half the vegan SCOBY leather battle!
Homemade vegan leather [Tim Barribeau / Hobby Goblin]
Image via Iowa State University
