Love to hear how the government's plan backfire on them. That is empowering indeed! People used to think SCOBY needs caffeine to survive, but it's not true. Yeasts do need sugar as food, so substituting sugar is a bad idea, but more information has come out about the caffeine part. The reason kombucha brewing was unsuccessful with some herbal tea was because of the volatile oil. When doing an experiment with herbal tea, if the same SCOBY can survive the kombucha brewing process a minimum of 10 times and form baby SCOBY every time, then the herbal tea is considered a viable option for kombucha brewing.