'Booch News

Statistics show that 50% of small businesses failure occurs within five years. Last year, we looked at general numbers for the kombucha industry. This is the story behind one brand’s decision to move on.

In this interview, Joshua Rood, founder of the hard kombucha company Dr Hops, discusses the challenges the company faced, including market saturation, declining product quality, and the impact of the pandemic on experiential marketing. He details the company’s national expansion strategy, its reliance on co-packers and contractors, and the financial difficulties that ultimately led to its demise. Rood reflects on the lessons learned and expresses his disillusionment with the beverage industry, while hinting at future endeavors focused on public benefit projects. The interview provides a case study of a hard kombucha company’s struggles in a rapidly evolving market.

Some lessons that can be learned from Dr. Hops’ experience, based on the interview with Joshua:

Decline of the hard kombucha market: The hard kombucha market stopped growing for reasons that are not entirely clear. Rood speculates that the rapid growth of the industry in its early years led to a decline in product quality as companies prioritized scale over quality. As companies rushed to scale up production, they may have compromised quality, which turned off consumers.

The limitations of digital marketing: Rood emphasizes the importance of field marketing, especially for new and unfamiliar products like hard kombucha. Explaining the product in person at events was crucial to their early success. For two-and-a-half years, the pandemic made in-person events like beer festivals and street fairs impossible, severely limiting Dr Hops’ ability to reach new customers. Social media alone, like Instagram, was not sufficient.

The challenges of national expansion: Dr Hops pursued a national strategy from the outset, aiming to be one of the first major brands in the category. This approach involved significant expenses, particularly for field marketing across a wide geographical area. Rood acknowledges that a more localized, organic growth strategy might have been more sustainable.

The importance of distribution: Rood highlights distribution challenges, particularly as the hard kombucha market slowed. Without strong distribution partnerships, it became increasingly difficult for Dr Hops to get their product in front of consumers. “We never really had a problem with consumers, once we reached them. But reaching the consumer is very hard.”

The need for the right product at the right time: Rood reflects that Dr Hops might have been more successful if they had a different product that better aligned with current consumer trends. He cites the example of Beatbox, a sweet, wine-based cocktail brand that has thrived in recent years.

Debt burden: Dr Hops raised millions of dollars in investments to fund its growth, which resulted in a significant debt burden. While much of the early debt was converted into shares, the company still had substantial debt at the time of its closure, which Rood was tasked with managing.

The value of perseverance and adaptation: Despite facing challenges, Rood and his team persisted for several years, exploring new product ideas and marketing approaches. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful in saving the business, their willingness to adapt and try new things is a valuable lesson.

Overall, Dr Hops’ difficulties resulted from a combination of market factors, the impact of the pandemic, strategic decisions, and operational challenges. The company struggled to find a solution for two years but made the difficult decision to close last month, at which point consumers did respond positively to the offer of free beer! And…I was able to add a nice 3-tap kegerator to my home brewing operation at a bargain price.

Listen to the podcast to hear Joshua tell the Dr Hops story.

The post RIP: Dr Hops Hard Kombucha, San Leandro, California appeared first on 'Booch News.

This is a follow-up to the recent post about the study by the students and faculty the department of chemistry at Shippensburg University. The lead authors are Professors John Richardson and Jeb Kegerreis. They spoke with Booch News about the background and implications of their experiments suggesting that brewing kombucha in air-permeable silicone bags optimizes oxygen exposure, resulting in more efficient acid production, lower ethanol concentrations, and greater sugar utilization than kombucha brewed in jars.

Edited transcript (original audio at the bottom).

Booch News: This call was motivated by the fantastic paper you wrote Optimizing Oxygen Exposure during Kombucha Brewing Using Air-Permeable Silicone Bags. I posted a summary of that, created with the AI tool NotebookLM.I’m not a scientist and you guys being analytic chemists, professors at Shippensburg University, you went into a lot of science. I think the net of it was–at the end of the paper where it says Discussion–that you believe that because of a combination of factors, these air-permeable silicone bags are a great way of brewing kombucha and making starter liquid. What led you to choose a silicone bag as an experiment?

John Richardson: That’s actually a good question. The one thing we do want to sort of clear up here right away is that it wasn’t originally our idea. This was actually brought to us by a fellow brewer out of Joplin, Missouri, a lady by the name of Kimberly Welch, who had a company called Creature Craft Soda. I did a little research, and it looks like they went out of business a short time ago, unfortunately. But she had been brewing in these silicone bags. There’s actually a video from 2022 that you can go back and see. That’s probably the first reference ever to using a silicone bag.

She contacted Cultured Analysis because she thought some interesting things were happening with the bag brewing. She noticed a lot of acidity. Because of that, she suggested that there may be a decrease in the alcohol levels in the bag brews. She wanted us to investigate that for her. She began sending us some samples of some of her finished brews. We noticed exactly that–very high acid content and very low alcohol content in comparison to what we would expect for a comparable brew to be done in a normal jar or other type of brewing vessel. Really, she was the first person to recognize that this could actually be a thing.

We glommed on to it because we were very interested in studying aeration or oxygenation of kombucha brews. We wanted to do it quiescently. We didn’t want to disturb the brew by, for example, bubbling oxygen through it. Using the silicone bag was a very good way of letting the brew essentially soak up the oxygen without having to disturb it. It was an excellent vehicle for studying aeration of kombucha without disturbing the brew.

BN: So how long was that experiment conducted for? Prior to publishing, the paper in the summer, right? How long was the process that you did in the lab there?

Jeb Kegerreis: What led to the paper were two main year-long undergraduate research projects. When Kim came to us, she said that she really wanted scientific verification of those things that she thought were happening. We explained how our undergraduate research program worked to her. She was gracious enough to let us take that as essentially a system that we can study with our undergraduates. We did two main brewing projects where we had a comparable jar and a silicone bag. We were able to monitor the metrics of each and see what the major differences were. That’s what led to the paper. We’re even continuing that work now. We’re trying to keep brewing, again, bag versus jar-type stuff to see what the differences are, but now we’re changing food sources and things like that.

BN: Okay. I did have to verify with you when I published that summary on Booch News, which people can find on the October 31st posting, because you’ve given the name of the source of the bags– a company in San Francisco called Anova Culinary Precision. They made a big point of the fact that their bags were airtight, to store salmon cuts and things. Then you confirmed that was the bag you used, and the silicone is air permeable, even though that obviously wasn’t the selling point of the bag.  So, my first question is, you do mention in the paper how you brewed three liters of kombucha, but how much is that bag that you purchased? How much liquid does each bag hold? It’s not a three-liter bag, is it?

John: Well, I think it’d probably be a gallon bag. They’re actually advertised as half-gallon bags, but you can easily stuff a gallon of liquid into one. Every bag is just close to a gallon.

BN: Okay. Now this paper’s just come out. You mentioned the lady who’d been using a system for a couple of years. Has there been any uptake? Are you aware of commercial companies switching to this? Or is this pretty much a laboratory experiment at the moment?

Jeb:  We’ve brought it to a brewer here or there on the commercial side of things, but I don’t know that they’ve really enacted it en masse yet. We see it as something that we think will be a useful tool for brewers in the future on a commercial scale, just because it’s a really good system for brewing starter. It just, the acidity and the low alcohol in a short timeframe, it just makes it a really, really advantageous situation for somebody who wants a lot of starter, to be able to then go brew a bunch of commercial brewers with.

John: I just made a brew myself using the bag just the other day and harvested it and then enjoyed it myself, but I just made a gallon. It’s great for home brewing, I think. At this point, if a home brewer wanted to play around with one of these things, it would be a really simple way to get into the kombucha brewing game if you wanted to do that. I think it would be harder on the commercial scale at this point because, first, we haven’t really in any way, shape, or form studied the scale-up process. Obviously, you would have to make a larger bag-equivalent vessel that did the same sort of thing. Then you’d have to study it because the dynamics would be different.

So right now, if you want to make starter in, let’s say, gallon quantities, it’s a really great way of doing that. But what if you wanted to make starter in 30-gallon quantities? Well, that might be a lot harder, or at least something that would have to be investigated and figured out.

Jeb: You could theoretically buy a bunch of bags and have multiple brews going at one time. Because the volume of starter that you need is generally a lot smaller than what you need for your main brew. That’s why we still think that there is a commercial aspect.

But as John said, a part of our research in the future is going to be sort of looking for alternatives that exhibit the same sort of air permeability but can hold more volume.

BN: Well, one question that came up on the Instagram post that I put up, a couple of people immediately posted comments, raising the question that most kombucha manuals or the instruction books for home brewers and commercial brewers recommend ceramic containers, which is what I use. Then there’s obviously a whole market of stainless steel vessels that are used in craft beer as well, of various sizes, up to many thousands of liters for the larger brewers. The question was, is it healthy or is there a risk of contamination of the silicone plastic leaching into an acidic liquid? I don’t know if your lab can analyze the chemistry of that. What’s your thoughts on that?

John: Well, one thing that we know, is that silicone is a polymeric material like plastics. One thing that’s known about silicone is that it’s highly chemically inert, even compared to a lot of other plastics, and has to do with the nature of the polymer backbone that makes it up. One thing that you see with silicone is that if you look at its chemical structure, it’s really a chain of atoms, right? That chain consists of alternating silicone and oxygen atoms.

In that sense, it’s very close to glass. Glass is essentially polymer like that, also made up of silicone and oxygen. It’s closer in terms of its chemical structure. It’s more similar to glass than it is to the typical hydrocarbon-based polymers that people talk about. One example is that people use it for all sorts of things. It’s been used for many, many years for breast implants–also silicone. People don’t seem to mind putting it in their bodies and leaving it there for long periods of time. That’s one consideration. The other thing also is that it doesn’t have a copolymer agent such as BPA, which people talk about a lot. When you process silicone, there’s no BPA or any other copolymer additive like that that could then leach out, like, for example, you hear about in polycarbonate water bottles.

Jeb: Our organic chemist brought up another point, too, because we brought this to him because he has a lot more knowledge in that side of things. A lot of cookware is silicone coated. It’s out there as a usable semi-nerd material that is used in the food industry, obviously, and other industries as well.

Now, to be fair and to be like a scientist about this, we haven’t studied it directly, right? So kombucha does have a different sort of chemical makeup with low pHs and things like that, where it would be something in the future where if this took off, that it would be worth looking into. But from the standpoint of just the knowledge that we have and then the experts that we talk to, it looks like it would be a really good situation to avoid some of the issues with microplastics and things like that.

BN: Yeah, that’s interesting because, not being a scientist, you’ve just explained the sort of chemical makeup of silicone. It’s not like all plastics are the same. What you’re saying is it’s more like glass. How would it compare to, for instance, there’s one brand called Captain Kombucha in Europe, sold in plastic bottles. There’s also the lining of the aluminum cans. I know he’s advertised as BPA-free these days. Is that silicone as well, or is a plastic bottle a different kind of plastic or a different kind of substance?

John: Based on what I’ve seen with that sort of thing, I believe it’s a different kind of polymer. It’s also plastic-based. But again, the same concerns are there.

When you think about, for example, a polymer or plastic-coated can, they all have that. That’s so the aluminum doesn’t degrade under acidic conditions and you get aluminum in your kombucha. The idea there is no matter what you put your kombucha in contact with, there’s always going to be some leaching. There’s always going to be something that’s going to make its way into the kombucha in very, very tiny quantities.

Even if, for example, in a stainless steel fermenter, it’s probably going to have a fairly robust oxide layer on it that protects it. But there’s still going to be stuff leaching out of even something like stainless steel that’s going to go into the kombucha. In that sense, it’s a problem you’re never going to 100% avoid. It’s just a problem that you’re going to be able to mitigate.

There’s really very little difference. If you think about that, somebody who is putting a kombucha, for example, in a plastic bottle or a plastic lined can, that’s really not that different than leaving a kombucha to brew for a week in a silicone bag when you really think about it.  I mean, it’s much less time.

BN: Yeah, your brewing process takes a week, whereas it can be on the store shelves the expiration date can be a year in the future. This idea which your paper explains in great detail–about the advantage of extra oxygenation–how this overall gas permeable surface area of the bag far exceeds that of a jar of equal volume.  I do know you’re probably aware of one of the manufacturers out there called Stout Tanks. They make a very flat, almost bathtub-shaped brewing vessel, They advertise it as it has much more surface area. Even if people don’t use plastic bags, your experiments point to the fact that maximizing the surface area is a good thing.

Jeb: Exactly. It’s very much akin to that. It’s all about just making sure that as much of your kombucha as possible is open to the atmosphere where the auctions contain. Stout Tanks trays are doing exactly the same sort of thing. The nice thing about the bag is that you have 360 degrees to play with. It’s just completely encapsulating your volume so you kind of there’s this thing called an interfacial area if you want to get fancy with it. But essentially like the surface area to volume. It really takes advantage of it to a great extent by usage of the bag.

BN: I’m aware as all home brewers are–you see it all over the Facebook groups for home brewing–of what is a SCOBY?  Originally people thought the SCOBY was the pellicle and now everybody is much more aware that the symbiotic culture bacteria and yeast is the starter liquid and the pellicle is a byproduct.  So, you can actually brew kombucha absent the pellicle if you’ve got sufficient starter liquid. But your paper says that another consideration is the enhanced formation of pellicles throughout the inner surface area of the bag. Are  you saying when you put a gallon of the liquid in the bag that you get a pellicle–that well known gelatinous substance–across the whole surface of the bag?

Jeb: You’re going to grow a bag within the bag. Eventually a pellicle completely surrounds your kombucha. The SCOBY is definitely in the liquid, but the pellicles are an important part of that too. because we think it provides protection for the microbes that are part of the SCOBY.

Along the entire surface of the bag it starts as a thin layer and then eventually as time goes by just like your pellicle on the jar, it’ll thicken up. Then eventually you could even just sort of remove the pellicle as a whole from the silicone bag and it can just, it’s, it’s sturdy enough to suspend the kombucha within it.

John: It looks like a pillow almost when you pull it out of it.

BN: Does that limit the amount of oxygen if you have a thicker pellicle you’re not getting as much air into the liquid itself?

Jeb: I think it’s a really good question. We tried to look into this. Again, it’s one of these things that is on our list of future research to do. But certainly from the beginning, and over the short timeframe that we’ve used the bag to brew starter, the maximized oxygen exposure is definitely beneficial.

It’s a really good question to ask: is there maximum exposure up front and then at the end it restricts it?  Does that then speak to different processes happening towards the end of the brew that wouldn’t be necessarily as prevalent in the front of the brew?  But to answer your question directly, no, we haven’t really looked into that yet.

We just know that when we look at the dynamics of the processes of the microbes that they’re, they’re certainly enhanced in the bag versus an equivalent jar.

John: We’ve run some of these experiments for upwards of 30 days.  So you’re generating pretty thick, pellicle in 30 days. Yet we still seem to notice the effect of greater oxygenation even across the entirety of that brew time.

BN: Well, this is great. I’d like to just have you bring me up to date on the developments for you at the Shippensburg University Analytic Chemistry Lab and Cultured Analysis which people should listen to the first podcast from July 23, 2023.

I looked at your Instagram. It seems you had some very keen undergrads or graduate students, Cole Pearson, Lizzie and Abby, who are part of what you call a “Brew Crew”—a part of Cultured Analysis. So, you have commercial clients and the undergrads step in and run experiments. But how’s, how’s Cultured Analysis doing since we spoke last 18 months ago?

John: Well, we’re doing okay. We’re holding our own. We’re getting more and more clients over time, which is a good thing. It’s just like any other small business though it kind of ebbs and flows. August and September, I was so busy. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then in October, November business has kind of fallen off. But that’s kind of the way it’s been. It ebbs and flows. But the nice thing about it is, we’re sort of in here. I like to think of it almost as a symbiotic arrangement because we’re in a university. When business falls off a little bit, there’s all these experiments to go do.

There’s brewing to be done, there are students to be engaged. It just turns out there’s always plenty to do. The neat thing about it is when we think about Shippensburg University’s Chemistry Department and Cultured Analysis, we’re kind of one and the same. The students don’t necessarily get directly involved in my work with clients, but we’ve got all this research going on, on the side the students involve themselves with.

We’ve introduced kombucha brewing and analysis into the curriculum here. We’ve got entire laboratories across the semester that are geared to understanding the brewing process and how to make measurements. We’ve got students brewing. That’s the Brew Crew. So, they’re involved. It’s really cool to see because they get to decide, okay, what vessels are we going to use? What teas are we going to use? How are we going to flavor the kombucha? When do we call it done? When do we harvest it? So, I mean, they do the whole thing, which is really, really neat. It really involves them in a very unique sort of way.

Jeb: Cultured Analysis interfaces with the university really well. We essentially have students that are freshmen to junior year where they kind of address a little bit of interest in kombucha and we involve them in the brewing. It’s more of a fun thing, like when a brewer would do at home. Then for senior research for our undergrads, it gets a little bit more formal and stringent. That’s when we can really dig into a lot of these problems that become the focus of our research. We’ve had really good success with our undergrads. We’ve even been featured by the American Chemical Society. They did a whole media write-up about our research group last year.

And even our students now, we have two current students working on a bag versus jar project where we’re trying to use fructose as a food source.

And they’ve even won a travel award to the national American Chemical Society meeting. The company really brings a real nice advantage to the students that we have in terms of giving them opportunities to do real world like impactful research on kombucha.

John: The stuff that we learn through the research that we do with our students, yes, folds directly back into the knowledge base that Jeb and I have to work with our clients in terms of consulting and R&D and this kind of stuff.

Jeb: I would say we’re picking up, we’re picking up a little bit more consulting work and having these tools and this knowledge in our back pocket to be able to apply to other people’s problems really is a benefit for the company.

BN: Have you had any graduates go off into the industry, either starting their own kombucha company or working with others around the country that you’re aware of?

John: Not yet, but they’d be stealing our thunder, I’m afraid. It could happen!

BN: Well, I did hear one lady say that she now brews kombucha at home. Some of them are motivated not just to come in the lab and run it through test tubes, but enjoy the benefits of being able to drink kombucha at home.

John: Yeah, a couple of ours dol Lizzie does brewing at home.

Jeb: Kombucha for us from the standpoint of the university is an amazing vehicle to get into real-world chemistry. A lot of our graduates go off to graduate school and they’ll be doing work in analytical chemistry or maybe biochemistry. Things that they’ve picked up on and got an experience with kombucha. Now they’re going on and get into the bigger field as a whole based off of that as a launching pad.

BN:  Do you do any, there is an organization I connected with in Oakland that does kind of citizen science. They run a program using begged, borrowed, and stolen equipment–well,  maybe not stolen–but they have a lab they built and they go as far as doing DNA analysis. Have you taken it as far as DNA or is that more biology and chemistry?

Jeb: No, we’re still in like focused on the chemical components and then obviously the biochemistry is a big important part of that, but we really are focused in on like what like the main chemical components are for a brew and tracking them over time.Most of our research and our consulting work is focused around that.

John: I mean, the biological side is something that would be really nice to learn.

But first of all, it’s really not our specialty. Jeb and I will agree on one thing. We tried to avoid as much biology in college as we possibly could.

Looking back on it was probably a bad idea.

John: We want to think of ourselves as pure chemists, but then when you get into the real world like this, you realize that biology and chemistry are very, very much intertwined. You can’t really have one without the other.

Jeb: In fact, a lot of the arguments we make in the paper and in our current research are sort of inferring what must be happening with the biology based off the chemical results that we see. Future projects will have to dig in and make sure that our hypotheses are correct with those respects.

John:  That’s what I like to say about the chemistry of kombucha, especially as Jeb mentioned when you’re looking at it as a function of time. What it’s telling us is basically what those microbes are doing. We do get some insight about who the microbes are and what those microbes are doing by looking at the chemicals that they generate those microbes are little chemical factories. That’s what I like to tell our students.

BN: Well, guys, it’s been great to catch up with you and get clarity on the experiments you’ve done using air-permeable silicone bags and wish you every luck developing that.

John: Well, thank you, Ian. It’s always good to come on your podcast. We always enjoy it.

The post Interview: Silicone Bag Brewing appeared first on 'Booch News.

Last week I posted an appreciation of the Instagram of Susy Drinks Kombucha – an impressive archive of over 270 detailed reviews of commercial brands in the States and Europe. At the time I speculated that

…she grew up in northern Italy, studied craft beer making, and worked as a sommelier (hence her discriminating vocabulary about beverages). She is sober and lives in or around Brooklyn, where she reads philosophy when not picnicking in Prospect Park. She travels to Europe regularly.

I’m delighted to post this podcast interview with Susy herself: Susanna Danieli. She does indeed live in Brooklyn, was raised in Vicenza and Rome, and trained as a sommelier.

As a trained sommelier with a master’s in spirits and craft beer tasting, she brings a unique and sophisticated palate to the kombucha scene. Her approach, informed by epistemology and enology, treats kombucha as a living subject with personality and character:

I don’t adopt an analytical, surgical approach as the normal sommelier does–in which you have an object in front of you. Instead, I take an epistemological approach, where you have a subject, and you encounter wine (or kombucha). I approach kombucha as if she is alive, as we are alive. And every time we encounter a wine, the wine may have changed because it evolves as we evolve. As the philosopher Heraclitus says, “Everything flows.” So every time I meet a wine or a kombucha, I may have changed, I may have another sensation, I may have another feeling.

The interview covers Susy’s personal kombucha journey, from her initial encounter with the beverage to her decision to quit alcohol and focus on kombucha as a healthy alternative. She also discusses her kombucha review process, her preference for authentic, naturally fermented kombucha, and her thoughts on the current state of the kombucha industry. The conversation touches on cultural differences in taste preferences, the growth of the kombucha market, and the importance of finding high-quality kombucha.

Susie’s review highlight the lack of standardization and the prevalence of overly sweet, inauthentic kombucha in the market. She emphasizes the importance of natural ingredients, minimal sugar, and a distinctive sourness as hallmarks of quality kombucha.

I read the labels a lot. Every time I see carbonated water, I think, “Okay, so this is not kombucha…” So yes, I always look for fresh ingredients. I avoid extracts. It’s not easy to find dry, complex kombucha. Especially in the States, it isn’t easy to find kombucha that is just original, unflavored and unsweetened.

Susie welcomes kombucha brands to reach out to her via a DM on Instagram if they would like her to review their product. She is particularly interested in discovering kombucha outside of New York City and expanding her knowledge of the kombucha scene.

Check out what Susie says in this 30-minute interview.

The post Interview: Susy, the Kombucha Connoisseur appeared first on 'Booch News.

Edited transcript (original audio at the bottom).

Booch News: I was delighted to make contact with Caroline Gilmartin and Jo Webster, two British fermentation experts who live in the southwest of England. I’d found them on the Substack platform, which some people might be aware of, where they host two videos on kombucha posted to Booch News, which showed the varieties of commercial kombucha out there and their capability to generate new kombucha from what’s called back-slopping into the sweet tea base. We started out by talking about their focus on the followings that they have on the Substack platform, and the conversation continued from there.

Have a listen.

Caroline Gilmartin: I’d like to grow my Substack following, but really, I like Instagram. I like the interaction with people on Instagram. It’s media. There’s always somebody online to talk to or to listen to me going on about fermented foods. I can see the value of Instagram still. But yeah, I think Jo and I have, to some extent, we’ve got a different set of followers. I’ve got lots of mum, have-a-go followers, and Jo’s got a lot more serious. I think you have. I think you’ve got more serious, more nutritionally interested followers than I have.

Jo Webster: Because I am serious…I’m so serious!

CG :I’m not very serious. But I think that you’ve worked in so many health-related fields that you’ve brought more people with you from that.

BN: Well, that’s interesting, because I wonder if you can share some of your background. Caroline, I see you have a PhD already, and I believe that’s in science and biology. I’ve got your book, Fermented Foods, a Practical Guide, which the first two chapters give an excellent overview of everything about the gut microbiome and so on. I really have to read it two or three times to fully understand it, because I’m not a scientist. And, Jo, I think you’re still working on your doctorate. Is that correct?

JW: Yeah. So, Caroline’s got a doctorate in microbiology, and it was one of her comments that finally galvanized me into going on to do mine. So, I’m thoroughly enjoying that.

CG: Mine was 25 years ago.

JW: Actually, I’m totally loving it. It’s just the fact that I’d probably quite like to put my children in the freezer on occasion. I have to get a bit more done, but there we go.

BN: Well, it’s great that you’re both expert on a wide range of fermented foods, and it was really, though, kombucha that brought you to my attention. As I said, you have two videos on sub-stack, and I kind of reviewed them in reverse order. In the one, though, that many people have commented on, you tasted a range of commercial kombuchas and speculated on the production methods they used, and looked at what you call kombucha and no-bucha, and even into things like packets of powdered kombucha…

JW: …and concentrate. So, I think Caroline and I, we’re very different people, but we have a common desire for some level of scientific rigor and transparency in the fermented foods field, because what we can see is what’s been a millennia of human usage and harnessing of microbes has, in a good way, become more common and more well known, and with a greater understanding of the gut microbiome, to the potential benefits of the interactions with microbial metabolites and constituents and the microbes themselves, has led to increasing levels of commercial interest.

But in that process, most of these, whether it’s your milk kefir grains or the kimchi or the kombucha, historically, these were made in communities or in families. There was no transport chain to speak of, there was no refrigeration, there was no issue, but with our modern transport system, the cost of refrigeration to keep live fermented products manageable and not exploding comes cost and issues for large-scale commercial producers.

We felt that in lots of areas, particularly with kombucha, there are things happening that with some level of greenwashing on websites means that people may be thinking they’re buying traditional sort of homemade process kombucha, and that’s not what they’re getting.

We’re not here to get aerated or criticize or, you know, denigrate people for the commercial choices they have made, but we are here to be a voice for transparency and pointing out where things are being said or maybe things are being glossed over in terms of filtering out yeast or pasteurizing or the debate between aluminum cans and glass bottles. So that the people that care, because not everybody does care, might be able to use the information we provide to discern so that they can choose the fermented drinks made the way that they want them based on what’s important for them.

At the moment, there is a parlous lack of clarity for consumers.

So that’s what led us to meet up and go, Caroline was like, well, damn it, we make kombucha. The basic tenor is by seeding, by back-slopping from your existing kombucha into your tea to make new kombucha. She’s full of bright ideas and said, why don’t we just do it? Why don’t we just buy a load and see what happens? The results were completely fascinating by our perspective.

CG: The results were so fascinating. We just started today doing it again with another 16 different kombucha because people were interested and asked us, oh, but what about this brand or what about that brand and what about the other brand? And very importantly, what we want people to take away from this next round of doing it is it’s very simple to try this experiment yourself.  Whatever kombucha you’re interested in, if you want to see if it will make decent kombucha, take it, add some tea, and see what happens in three or four weeks time.

JW: Yeah, and it’s super interesting from the, you know, we’ve got a list of 16 makes, some bottled, some canned. We’ve actually got Caroline’s homemade one included this time alongside mine, which we didn’t have last time. But it’s been really interesting talking to some of the people in advance. So we ordered all of the kombuchas anonymously, so there was no risk of any sort of cheating or using up there and bought and paid for them all. So there’s no bias. There’s no backhanders happening at all. But it was interesting in talking to some of them.

There was one we were trying to find out who made the M&S one, for example, and M&S is in it. We’ve done it all blinded. We’ve labeled the kilners this time and had a third party put the kombucha in. We don’t know which kombucha is in which kilner jar this time, which I think is really important.

This is just for an example, who makes the M&S one, which actually looks super interesting to me because what it looks like, they’ve got a complex method that they’re developing of taking out the yeast. Of course, the yeast can consume the sugar to produce alcohol, which can be a problem. People don’t want high levels of alcohol in their kombucha. But of course, one of the founders rightly pointed out that we probably won’t be able to grow or make kombucha from that, because if there’s no yeast to ferment the sugars in that process, then that process is fundamentally changed.

BN: But this all does get back to what you and Caroline, Jo and Caroline, as I do, being homebrew kombucha makers, see when we go to the shops, to the stores, and look for commercial kombucha. As you said, Jo, you can actually put drain water in a bottle and sell it as kombucha because there are no standards. And so, people buy what is named kombucha, and in the shops, it might not bear any resemblance…

CG: …to what we know is kombucha, but again, I don’t know how you deal with that.  I know that kimchi is a protected term. What’s that word called when the term of kimchi is protected? You know, there’s like a special process that you go through and you get some kind of certification. So, it’s got a very long name. I can’t remember. [Administered by the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service] There’s a special process that you can go through that the Korean government can obviously afford to do. But kombucha doesn’t have enough ownership by anybody. So, getting a definition of kombucha is very, very important.

JW: Also, that can be problematic because I know that a whole group of people went through it with sourdough as well. I think there really are pros and cons to that because, you know, like anything, when you start to put rules by something, then you get enforcement. Then unless everyone agrees what the rules are of what the definition is, then you can get small producers being excluded by onerous processes because some third party has decided. So, I think it’s really tricky.

We’re not saying that we know what kombucha is. I think what we know is what there’s been a really long history of consumption of. That is: green or black tea with sugar, with a backslop, that’s acetobacter, gluconacetobacter, and komagataeibactor, and some yeast in there doing their thing to create a slightly acidic drink that we know has those live microbes in there and a range of gluconic acid, glucuronic acid the other sorts of organic acids.

CG: What is very interesting to me is this trend to pasteurize this and to filter and to remove all live microbes and to put in something that is designated a probiotic

JW: So, we can go back and we can see what’s been historically made for a long time and the method that it was made by. But then there’s still not all that much research really on that traditional method, let alone on the method that all people have been making. We know nothing about what happens if we filter out the yeast or if we add this in or that in.

CG: And if you pasteurize it, whether you’re going to actually denature a lot of the compounds that are really good for you anyway. We don’t know enough about this stuff. I find it interesting that all of these bottles and cans in front of us now. There’s another issue as well, whether it’s being cans or bottles, have, you know, they’re gut-loving drinks.

Well, is it a gut-loving drink? There’s so many terms being used on so many of the websites in the cans that probably do breach trading standards. There’s a lot of that. I think we can all claim transparency. So if you do care about kombucha, you’d have more of an idea that it was a properly originally made kombucha…

JW: …and if you care about that, if you care about that or if you don’t. This is a really interesting thing that someone said to me, I listen to your podcast, what should kombucha taste like? And do you know what? Not many things shut me up. But that did shut me up. Holy mackerel, if you’re not making it at home, if you’ve never tried home kombucha, most people drinking this don’t know what it’s what home normal traditional kombucha smells like or tastes like to even be able to compare these commercially produced ones.

CG: Some of the commercially produced ones just taste like pop. If you had ginger beer that my dad would give to my children. Or if you have for, you know, one of these fiery ginger kombuchas, you would not really be able to tell the difference. There’s no real defining feature — that tang or that kind of even slightly cidery taste that you get from the kombucha.

JW: But then how do people even discern if they don’t even know? But then, you know, the fact is we’re not here to beat people up about it. I think a lot of people don’t care about the difference between traditional and these modern kombuchas. But I think a lot of people may be buying these things thinking that they’re good for them.

That’s where we feel like there should be a bit more transparency ideally with commercial producers about what they’re saying on the website, what they’re saying on the can and transparency about the process. Not that there’s a right or wrong process, but inevitably, the more process there is.

CG: People are always going to muck about with stuff. It’s in human nature. I think the issue is that any research that has been done on kombucha–and let’s just say there is precious little that–that has been done with proper, traditionally brewed, kombucha. That has not been done with kombucha soda with CBD in it that’s filtered with a backslop of bacillus coagulans added. So I would love somebody to do some proper research on this. I really would. They don’t need to. There’s no research that needs to go on in this area because it is an enormous market.

JW: What I did find is that I started drinking one brand. The other thing these things are great for is more choice for drinking less alcohol. So on a Friday night, I would be partial to a sedating gin and tonic, to be fair. Now, I’ve been having my water kefir that I make or my kombucha. But my husband had been buying a few makes from the supermarket. And I found myself, I really like this make, but I found myself slightly hankering after it. Then when I looked, I was like, I’m not used to drinking sugar, sweet and fizzy drinks to that extent. I think there was just something in the make of that drink that was slightly habit forming for me. That is a bit caution-making from my perspective.

BN: Well, I’ve got a question for you both. You’ve got science backgrounds. And I’m wondering, what’s the chance for valid scientific organizations to duplicate, replicate the research you’ve done in your kitchen and publish studies on, you know, the effectiveness of different kinds of kombucha on consumers?

JC: I mean, in humans, you’re talking a huge amount of money and an inordinately complex playing field because of the amount of variables. Like, it’s quite hard to bring humans in.  You know, humans lie when they are studied. Keep other variables normal in order to be able to then just add in the kombucha.

CG: You’re only having, say, 250 mils, aren’t you?

JW: There are studies in the pipeline I know of through various decent scientific establishments. But generally, they’re looking at they’re looking at fermented foods and drinks collectively, as in an intake in humans of a combination of those items. There’s so many layers that need to be done on kombucha. One defining in detail actually what’s going on in kombucha that’s traditionally made and then in the kombuchas that are made these other ways. Then there’s a whole other level of adding it into humans.

Also, the research into testing feces, that’s inordinately unreliable.

CG: But also, the fact is that no two kombucha SCOBYs are the same. You might have a kombucha SCOBY that’s got saccharomyces boulardii in, which is a known probiotic. It might be absent. You might have a kombucha SCOBY that’s got lactobacillus.

JW: But you could control and then post-test for that. But the answer to the question is there has to be somebody who cares enough about the outcome to put the finances and the people in what is hundreds of thousands of pounds of money and also work in order to clarify this. Manifestly, part of the question is how much do people actually care? How much do people care?

CG: People don’t need to do that now, because we’ve got 15 different varieties of kombucha in front of us today. And it shows there is a really happy, healthy kombucha market. Yeah. In the States, I believe is absolutely enormous. So we’re already possible where people need to prove anything.

JW: Also, it becomes completely ironic to me because we’re all banging on about ultra-processed foods. We’re fretting about how much aluminum might be in our cans of kombucha. But actually, if we’re actually really worried about health, I read a really interesting thing that was like, if a fundamental pillar of your life is corroding in terms of stress, connection to other humans, sleep, and basic fundamental nutrition, the things you’re eating three, four, five times a day, you ain’t going to fix that with a can or a thing of kombucha.

So in some ways, yes, whilst in theory, we’d love this research to be done, actually, what would happen? Would it change behavior? Would something come out of those findings? That would improve people’s health or change their behavior.

BN: So as a follow-on question to that, absent the expensive scientific research, is there any chance organizations like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or Which? magazine would be able to publish publish reviews and become a standard for the industry, in the beverage industry, that could assist consumers in kombucha to know what’s out there?

JW:  It’s a super interesting question. And interestingly, very recently in the UK, the Fermenters Guild has been set up, I think it’s two years old now, which has been a fantastic bringing together of Fermenters.  As you can imagine, both Caroline and my motivation for the Guild on some level of, not by a stick, but by carrot, holding out of standards and knowledge sharing around what, you know, authentic, what we’d understand to be the process of a range of ferments, maybe not just kombucha.

But the truth is, even within a collection of fermenters, there’s different motivations and desires and there’s different priorities. To some extent, that isn’t the sole direction the Guild has gone in, it would be fair to say. It is difficult to have those standards, to have a Which? magazine for ferments. One would need to know to have agreed amongst professionals or experienced people in that field what those standards are to then have objective criteria to be comparing things against.

CG: And professionals in the field absolutely cannot…

JW: Well, I mean, I tried to get a think tank together last year, unfortunately, because someone in my family became very ill. A think tank together to bring knowledge sharers, scientists and commercial producers together. I haven’t restarted [that project]. In theory, it would…

CG:  It won’t work, because actually the range of methods of production are so vast. There are so many things that you can do. There are so many ways that you can tamper with it and so many ways that you can justify it. And again, if you are looking at running a business to make kombucha available to people, we understand it is really, really difficult. I’d just like to see a lot more transparency so that people really understood. I think it’s very difficult to find out the processes behind what’s in these cans and it would be much better if people..

JW: But if there’s no, you know, I don’t know what it’s like in the US but in terms of, you know, health claims, inappropriate health claims. In the end, Caroline this afternoon was just like, ‘I’m sick of this!’ Because we’re just going through website after website with just unsubstantiated claims being made all over the place in terms of gut health, et cetera. But if there isn’t the money in, you know, health claims standards or whatever to be able to go through websites to police this.

Ultimately, it was a funny thing when I was trying to set up this, I think, that last year. I said to one of the commercial producers, you know, we want people to know what the traditional method is. This commercial producer said, yeah, but people don’t care. I think that person might be right. That there’s only a small percentage of people possibly that care. Probably those are the people making it traditionally because it’s such piggin’ hard work to do that. Even today with these 16 brands, the person setting up the experiment for us, we could hear exclamations from the other room where a bottle has been opened and then it’s exploded everywhere. That’s probably from the traditionally produced ones.

CG: If you’re going to sell traditional kombucha, you have to sell it to a responsible audience because if you sell that bottle of kombucha to somebody who isn’t listening or paying attention, and understand when they take it home that they’ve got to keep it in the fridge and they just put it on the side in the kitchen and you get an explosion on your hands, you are out of business.

So we totally understand the complexity of this. I’m always going to be somebody that encourages people to make their own kombucha.

JW: It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? It’s easy and it’s deep and it’s fun and it connects people.

CG: I do believe that there’s some kind of terroir thing going on with your own kombucha whereby when your kombucha has been in your house for a little while, you will prefer it to any other kombucha out there because the microbes in your home and in your environment will be inveigled into your kombucha and I can tell my kombucha out of the ones that we are going to test.

JW: Yeah, we’ll have to see because Caroline thought she could. Well, first of all, she came in and said she’d done a urine sample for us! I’m hoping that it wasn’t actually her urine that we’re now making.

BN: Well, obviously, there’s a lot of developments here. You asked me about the US and I’ve put pictures on Booch News showing the vast array of kombucha available in most of the markets here, but even here and especially in the UK, we’re at a very early stage in the development of the market. When I was back in Britain last month, I saw how infinitesimally available it was and, you know, maybe it’s like the market for yogurt 30 years ago when there was hardly any available and now it fills the shelves. So, do either of you see the potential for growth in the market coming anytime soon? And will there be an increase in the number of us home brewing?

JW: I don’t know. One would hope so. To me, there’s so much structurally wrong with our society that most people haven’t got the time to do basic cooking and, you know, they’re building flats and houses without kitchens now. So, in an ideal world, obviously, that’s what we would love to see happening.

CG: I shall carry on trying to do my absolute utmost to persuade people that there is a great deal of value in doing very simple things to empower yourself to look after yourself and your family.

JW: But to me, that isn’t just about consuming the kombucha either. For me, having some fermented foods and drinks in our lives is about nature connection and a constant reminder of our place in this enormous and complex fabric of life.

CG: I’m far too practical for that.

JW: Can you not ever think about the magic of what is happening in that?

CG: Well, I do think about my addiction to my own personal kombucha because it’s my own personal microbes and, you know, I do feel very connected to that and my milk kerfir.

JW: I think all I’m saying is that I’d really hope that that happens, Ian, but I think there definitely also needs to be room for commercial brands where people don’t have time and never will get round to that.

BN: Yeah, so it’s just like with yogurt, right? You can go to the supermarket and get a container filled with pink goop and sugar and it’s sold as raspberry yogurt, but there’s also the choice for natural yogurts that are clearly marked. What does that tell us, if anything, about consumers’ choices and the availability of the natural versus the artificial?

JW: So unless we start to be more discerning and look out for this information, if we believe the green wash and the stuff on half the things that we’re buying, then we’re going to end up probably eating things that we don’t actually intend to eat. The truth is, in 20, 30, 40 years’ time, it’s only us that are going to be living with the consequences of those choices, not the people making these products.

CG: I would think that, I mean, from my perspective, it would be absolutely lovely if at some point in the future, in the world, people could drink a can of kombucha. It would be a fantastic way of being able to improve the health of the nation if we sold kombucha that was known to have a glucuronic acid and acetic acid content that was of benefit to you and a range of microbes naturally occurring, working together, that would be good for you.

So it would be an absolutely brilliant way of improving the health of the nation if indeed that worked. But that is never going to be a priority. Improving health of the nation is literally on the bottom.

JW: Well, it’s definitely below making money, isn’t it?

CG: It’s definitely below making money. No, it’s literally at the bottom because making money is so easy.

JW: Also, to be fair, even if we never have all of that information and we chose to drink some of these kombuchas instead of, you know, we swapped out half of our alcohol consumption a week with this, we’re probably going to be better off. Even without having shown them this amazing benefit. And that’s a whole other conversation is, you know, are there many actually probiotic species in kombucha?

I think our idea of probiotics is going to change because historically, the research in that has certainly been in milk-based and dairy-based microbes, and that’s going to open out significantly in years to come, too.

CG: I have to say, I am a non-drinker, and I haven’t drunk since over 20 years now. I’ve never liked it. So my perspective is, I totally get this idea that drinking any kombucha is probably going to be better to lower your alcohol consumption, which is why we are just about transparency for people who really care about it, not being obsessive about people not wanting to use it to make kombucha. Because if you’re out and about on the run, it’s better that you grab yourself a kombucha than a tequila mixer.

JW: The thing is, we don’t want to become so puritanical that people are confused and then don’t buy kombucha at all and go to the gin instead.

CG:  It’s just all about understanding what it’s about. And obviously, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that people do understand that kombucha exists on different levels. Have a go at making it yourself. Have a go at trying a real thing.

JW: So just remembering that any of us are free to take the kombucha [you buy in the store] and make a cup of tea. We do one liter with two tea bags, 50 grams of sugar, and make your tea, put the kombucha into it and see what happens.

CG: But also, we’ve got a couple of UK brands that are making what I would call real kombucha using a traditional method. They’re partnering with really quite large scale restaurants. So you can get Momo in Gailes Bakery and you can get the L.A. Brewery one in Nando’s, for heaven’s sake.

There are instances out there where companies are trying their absolute best to keep to the traditional methods. So it’s a slight feeling of mine that if some people can do it, everybody could do it if they wanted to.

JW: I guess what you’re saying is if your principles and your priorities are for the kombucha to be as close to the traditionally made as possible, there are ways and means of doing so.

JW: I was very interested in the can/bottle dilemma. I know the gentleman at Go Kombucha has written quite a lot about this. I had a look at quite a few of the papers. I think what’s really interesting to me is one, if we just focus on one risk factor for humans, we might be lose sight of, you know, we can worry about the level of aluminum in the can. But if we’re destroying the environment by mining silica and transporting very heavy glass backwards and forwards, and that’s contributing to climate change, then, you know, to me, we need to look at all these factors in the round rather than focusing in, in nuanced detail in one area.

Also, in terms of aluminum, there’s aluminum in a lot of foods, there’s aluminum in antacids, actually. So if anyone’s on Gaviscon, they’ll be taking about 95 milligrams of aluminum hydroxide in in their five mill of Gaviscon. And there’s aluminum in breast milk and infant formula as well. And the levels of tolerable daily intake is about one milligram per kilogram of body weight, but our bodies are actually really good at clearing it. So we more than 95% is cleared by our body successfully.

BN: If I can just say Gary at Go–Gary Leigh—also has the concern that the cans are actually lined in plastic and that is also leaching into the kombucha. Whereas that sold, as he does, in glass bottles is in an inert package so that even though the linings in the cans are now meant to be BPA free, his issue is also that the plastics are leaching into the acidic liquid.

JW: I think he and I are agreed from what I’ve read of what he says. I would be really keen and it comes back to the same thing to actually be have cans of kombucha tested for how the linings perform and what happens there because that hasn’t been done yet. The one that we looked at was an interesting study in terms of looking at Green Cola and acetic acid solution and then another there was another liquid in there as well, Red Bull.

But I think the truth is, there’s microplastics everywhere, you know, when they look in organs of postmortems to find microplastics in almost every organ in our body. So, I think for me, it’s about, yes, this is a risk factor, but so is transporting large amounts heavy glass all over the place in environmental impact. I’d love for someone again, who’s going to do it to actually do this research in kombucha, which as we know, as Gary points out is important.

In front of us, we’ve these 16 [brands we are testing] in both cans and bottles. Clearly there are also companies that are doing both cans and bottles. So they’re doing ambient in cans and then they continue to do traditional in bottles.

So ideally, we want to take a curious perspective on it and actually interrogate this. Ideally, someone would actually do some research into it. But remembering that there’s other factors at play. So just panicking about plastic linings. If you’re drinking liters of the stuff, then maybe this is going to be an issue. Actually, in the scale of issues we face, nutritionally and environmentally.

CG: It’s just another food that you know, you really would do very, very hard to avoid it. And again, you’ve still got this idea of people thinking that glass is necessarily better. But as we know, the weight of the glass bottle, the production, the heat required to make a glass bottle, the mining of the sand. The recyclability. It goes into making a glass bottle. Again, I think the jury’s still out

JW: There are some companies that are great at trying to do offers on their websites to get the bottles returned so that they can be reused.

BN: And actually, it points to the most environmentally friendly way of consuming kombucha apart from home brewing is when you can get kombucha on tap. And it might help if more British pubs started offering it on tap to people who want a non-alcoholic alternative, since I understand hundreds of pubs in the UK are closing every month.

CG: Our local round the corner to us, they’re all closing.

JW: And also, I’ll go into ones, and I know I’m in my little echo chamber, but, and ask, say, do you have kombucha? And honestly, I haven’t been into a pub that’s actually stocked kombucha or water kefir.

CG: A large supermarket in Minehead in the UK, which is a small town in the north of Somerset, there is not one single brand of kombucha in the shop in any way, shape or form.

JW: It’s not something that they have or know about. And that’s a sad thing as well, but it’s sort of niche middle class.

BN: Yeah, that’s very true. Although I think in certain areas in the US, like where I live in Vallejo, which is an old shipbuilding town, there’s a lot of kombucha in the local supermarket that gets drunk by people who are not middle class, but, you know, lower middle class, working class, and definitely not the young yoginis that you see often on the Instagram for the kombucha companies. Anyway, thanks so much for spending time talking with us and sharing all this information on Booch News. I must say before we sign off, that if people want to contact you, Caroline, you’re on Instagram at every.good.thing. And Jo, I think you’re on Instagram as jo.webster.health. And from there, people can click through to your sub-stack and various other places where they can find your material. It’s been great talking with you and look forward to this test you’re doing with another 16 brands.

JW: Thanks for speaking with us.

CG: Yes, it’s been great, thank you.

A 38-minute recording.

The post Interview: Caroline Gilmartin & Jo Webster, Fermentation Experts appeared first on 'Booch News.

The 2024 KBI European Salon was held Oct 24-25 in the meeting space at the Terra Veritas organic supermarket in Barcelona, promising a “dynamic discussions surrounding the changes in the kombucha market…a landscape that is evolving rapidly, presenting both exciting opportunities and formidable challenges.” Terra Veritas posted a video of the event on their Instagram. As you can see, there were around 45 in attendance. Around half came from Europe, others from as far away as Taiwan, the UAE, and Australia.

In her welcome note printed in the conference Agenda, KBI Director Kendra Sepulveda noted:

The World Kombucha Awards were presented the day after the main conference, as reported on Booch News.

In this exclusive interview, Kendra reflects on the conference highlights and shares the news that the next event will be a second KKON in Reno, Nevada, provisionally scheduled for September 2025.

The post Report: KBI European Salon appeared first on 'Booch News.

This podcast is the result of an experiment with Google’s new generative A.I. tool NotebookLM — created “to help you make sense of complex information. When you upload your sources, it instantly becomes an expert, grounding its responses in your material with citations and relevant quotes.”

Above and beyond an impressive capacity to extract relevant bullet points from complex documents, a powerful–some might say “spooky”–feature of the software is the ability to generate audio in the form of a podcast-style discussion based on the document.

With one click, two AI bots start a lively “deep dive” discussion based on the source document. They summarize material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.

The program contains the disclaimer that “It’s important to remember that these generated discussions are not a comprehensive or objective view of a topic, but simply a reflection of the sources that you’ve uploaded.” Google also reassure us that “since it’s your notebook, your personal data is never used to train NotebookLM.” (Given that Google can reach in and read each and every email you send and receive this might or might not reassure people.)

I tested NoetbookLM by uploading an 18-page PDF report Live, Probiotic, or Neither? Microbial Composition of Retail-Available Kombucha and “Hard” Kombucha in the Pacific Northwest of the United States authored by Keisha Harrison of Oregon State University and others. This is heavy-duty biochemistry, as shown by this brief snippet:

The audio (see Podcast below) was created with ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER PROMPT from me. I simply loaded the PDF, clicked on ‘create audio’, and was done. The results, delivered in the upbeat tone of morning news hosts, are astounding.

This transcript (I’ve named the automatons ‘Bob’ and ‘Sally’ for no particular reason) reveals at least one failure – 8:20 in – where the AI seems to ‘hallucinate’ and refer back to ‘something we talked about’ which they have not mentioned, and, more seriously, discusses added bacillus coagulans lowering levels of gluconobacter. When checked in the NotebookLM chat window this claim was proven false. As with all generative AI, results should always be checked. A couple of other proof points where the audio was accurate are included.

I recommend you listen to the audio podcast (at the end of this posting) first and then come back and read the transcript after you have heard Bob & Sally.

Bob:   Okay, so kombucha, right? Everybody’s talking about it, but honestly, it can be kind of confusing. It’s all the labels and jargon, like what’s the deal with live, probiotic, and now even hard kombucha? Today, we’re going deep–diving into a study from Oregon State University where they took 39 different kombucha brands.

Sally: Wow, 39.

Bob: And actually analyzed what’s in the bottle versus what the label says.

Sally: Fascinating.

Bob: And let me tell you, some of the findings were pretty wild.

Sally: Well, what’s really interesting here is they went beyond just the marketing claims and used lab techniques to get a real look at the chemical and microbial makeup of these drinks, which I got to say gives us a much clearer picture of what we’re actually drinking.

Bob: Okay, so first up, a finding that might make you do a double take next time you’re at the store and in the kombucha aisle. You ready for this?

Sally: Yeah, hit me with it.

Bob: Over a third, over a third, of the kombucha that is labeled soft, meaning non-alcoholic, actually had alcohol levels above the legal limit.

Sally: Really?

Bob: Crazy.

Sally: That is wild.

Bob: And it’s probably not because brewers are trying to sneak in some extra booze. It seems like it’s mostly due to fermentation.

Sally: Oh, right.

Bob: It keeps happening. It just doesn’t stop inside the bottle, maybe because of temperature changes during shipping or something.

Sally: Yeah, temperature control can be a real issue.

Bob: So you think you’re getting this healthy non-alcoholic drink and bam, that’s a bit boozier than you expected. Not ideal.

Sally: No, not at all. And especially for people who are avoiding alcohol for personal or health reasons, I mean, that’s a big deal. You really have to read those labels super carefully.

Bob: Okay, well, speaking of alcohol, the study also looked at hard kombucha, which, you know, that’s a whole other thing.

Sally: Yeah.

Bob: It’s like kombucha is trying to be a cocktail or something.

Sally: Right, like it’s trying to appeal to a different crowd.

Bob: But besides the whole getting you tipsy part, what makes hard kombucha different from regular kombucha?

Sally: Well, that’s where the study gets really interesting. So they found that hard kombucha isn’t just soft kombucha that accidentally fermented too long. It looks like it’s actually intentionally fermented in a different way to get that higher alcohol content.

Bob: Okay, so how can they tell what’s the evidence for that?

Sally: One of the key indicators is glycerol. Hard kombucha has way higher levels of glycerol than regular kombucha.

>> This is verified by asking the NotebookLM chat window “Does the paper claim that hard kombucha has way higher levels of glycerol than regular kombucha?”

Bob: Hold on, hold on, glycerol. Remind me what that is again.

Sally: So glycerol is a natural byproduct of yeast fermentation. Basically, more glycerol means more fermentation, more of that intentional booziness.

Bob: So it’s like a fingerprint.

Sally: Yeah, exactly.

Bob: It shows that the brewers are aiming for that higher alcohol content right from the start.

Sally: Absolutely. And it’s not just about the alcohol either. They also discovered that erythritol was only present in the hard kombuchas.

Bob: Erythritol, that’s, that’s a sugar substitute, right?

Sally: Right. It’s calorie-free. And it’s gotten pretty popular lately.

Bob: So are they adding it to hard kombucha to make it like, healthier?

Sally: That’s what it seems like, like they’re trying to appeal to those health-conscious consumers who also enjoy a drink or two.

>> “Does the paper claim that erythritol is only present in hard kombuchas and if so, why is it added?”

Bob: It’s a whole marketing strategy. Fascinating. But okay, let’s get back to the basics of kombucha. The reason people started drinking it in the first place, those live and active cultures. The question is, are these drinks really as alive as they claim to be?

Sally: That’s a great question. And to answer that, they actually use techniques to count the live microbes in each kombucha.

Bob: Okay, so what’d they find? Was it like the microbial party in every bottle?

Sally: Well, they did find live microbes in most of the kombuchas, which you’d hope for. But the numbers were all over the place. And here’s the kicker. Just because a bottle screamed live and active on the label didn’t mean it had more microbes than one that didn’t.

Bob: Wait, so a brand that’s like super-duper live cultures. Could have less than one that doesn’t even mention it.

Sally: Yep, pretty surprising, right?

Bob: That’s kind of misleading, don’t you think?

Sally: It really makes you wonder about the labeling for sure. And on top of that, while most of the kombuchas did have some live microbes, the overall numbers were still way lower than what you’d find in, say, yogurt, which is something we know is good for gut health.

Bob: Okay, so this is important. Just because a drink has some live microbes, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to be this probiotic powerhouse.

Sally: Exactly.

Bob: There’s more to it than that.

Sally: 100 percent.

Bob: Right. It seems like it all comes down to the specific types of bacteria.

Sally: Right. For something to be considered a true probiotic.

Bob: Yeah.

Sally: It needs to have specific strains of bacteria that have actually been studied and proven to have health benefits. And not only that, you need enough of those bacteria to actually make a difference.

Bob: So it’s not just about being live, it’s about the right kind of live. Exactly. The right amount.

Sally: And speaking of the right kind, they looked at the types of microbes in these kombuchas. Things got pretty interesting when they zeroed in on the products that specifically claimed to have probiotics added to them.

Bob: Okay. Like what kind of probiotics are we talking about here?

Sally: Well, one of the most common ones they were looking for was bacillus coagulans. It seems like every other kombucha brand out there is touting this bacillus coagulans.

Bob: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that on labels. So were they actually putting it in there?

Sally: Some brands, yes. They actually did have bacillus coagulans in the amounts they claimed, but then there were others.

Bob: Others? What do you mean?

Sally: Well, for example, a lot of kombuchas claim to have added probiotic strains of lactobacillus.

Bob: Okay.

Sally: But when they tested them, they found little to no evidence of those strains actually being there.

Bob: Wow. So some of these kombucha companies might be stretching the truth a little bit about their probiotic claims. That’s not exactly reassuring.

Sally: It definitely raises some questions about transparency, that’s for sure. But don’t swear off kombucha just yet. It can still be a delicious and refreshing drink.

Bob: Of course, we’re not saying ditch the kombucha altogether. It’s more about like empowering ourselves to be informed consumers.

Sally: Exactly. Don’t just take those labels at face value.

Bob: So before we move on, I have to ask, what about the kombucha that’s traditionally brewed, you know, the kind without any added probiotics and stuff?

Sally: Oh, that’s a great question and actually a perfect transition to what we’re talking about next. So you were asking about traditionally brewed kombucha and how those added probiotics might be affecting that whole ecosystem of microbes that’s already in there.

Bob: Right, because we know traditionally brewed kombucha has its own unique blend of microbes, even without any probiotics added.

Sally: Right. It’s like a whole little world in there.

Bob: Exactly.

Sally: And this study actually gives us some clues about what might be happening when we introduce those extra probiotics.

Bob: OK, so did they find that adding those specific probiotics actually messed with the natural balance in traditionally brewed kombucha?

Sally: Well, let’s think back to gluconobacter for a minute. Remember we talked about that?

>>In fact they have *not* talked about it.

Bob: Gluconobacter, right. One of the main players in traditional kombucha helps give it that tangy flavor.

Sally: So they looked at the levels of gluconobacter in the kombucha samples and they noticed something interesting. In some of the samples that had bacillus coagulans added, which is a probiotic, right? Bacillus coagulans are a  very popular probiotic. In those samples, the levels of gluconobacter were actually lower.

Bob: So it’s like adding the bacillus coagulans kind of pushed out the gluconobacter a bit.

>>There is no evidence for this in the paper. The claim was checked by asking the NotebookLM chat window — not the audio generation tool – “does the paper claim that samples that had bacillus coagulans added report lower levels of gluconobacter?” The answer was:

Sally: It seems that way, yeah. And it makes you wonder, you know, when we add these specific probiotics to something like traditionally brewed kombucha, are we disrupting that balance that naturally occurs?

Bob: It’s like maybe those micros in traditional kombucha, they kind of like having their own party.

Sally: Right, exactly.

Bob: And then we come in and try to add guests who might not exactly vibe with the original crowd.

Sally: 100 percent. It’s like, hey, we’re just going to add this bacillus coagulans to the mix, hope that’s cool, but maybe it throws things off a bit.

Bob: Who invited this guy?

Sally: Right. And that can change the whole dynamic.

Bob: Totally. But, OK, this study wasn’t just about like the microbes themselves, was it? What about all those other compounds that get produced during fermentation? What did they find out about that?

Sally: Oh, good point. It’s not just about who’s there. It’s about what they’re doing.

Bob: Exactly.

Sally: So one of the compounds they measured was glucuronic acid. You might have heard of it. It’s often talked about in relation to liver health.

Bob: Right. Glucuronic acid is supposed to be really good for you.

Sally: Right, exactly. But here’s the thing, even though you hear about it a lot, this study and some other recent research actually haven’t found any detectable levels of glucuronic acid in the kombucha samples they tested.

Bob: Wait, so all this talk about glucuronic acid and kombucha and it might not even be there.

Sally: It’s a good reminder that we can’t always believe everything we hear.

Bob: For sure.

Sally: And that sometimes the science just doesn’t back up the hype.

Bob: Totally. So for those of us who are still totally into kombucha,

Sally: As you should be.

Bob: Any tips on what we should be looking for besides, you know, not getting fooled by those probiotic claims?

Sally: I always tell people, read the ingredient list.

Bob: Simple as that.

Sally: Just like you would with any other food or drink. Less is more, in my opinion.

Bob: Right.

Sally: Look for kombuchas that are mainly just tea, sugar, maybe some natural flavors.

Bob: OK, so keeping it simple.

Sally: Exactly.

Bob: And obviously we have to talk about the elephant in the room, that whole unexpected alcohol content thing we talked about earlier.

Sally: Right. Always a good idea to double-check that, especially if you’re avoiding alcohol for any reason.

Bob: Absolutely. Well, before we move on to the big question of kombucha’s overall health effects, I have one more question about this study.

Sally: OK, shoot.

Bob: They were looking at kombucha that was sold specifically in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. So does that mean these findings might not apply to like all kombucha everywhere?

Sally: That’s a really important point. We can’t assume that all kombucha is created equal. Right. The way kombucha is made, the microbes that end up in it, all of that can be different depending on where it’s produced.

Bob: So like a kombucha from, say, California might have a totally different microbial profile than one from Maine.

Sally: Exactly. It’s all about those local microbes and brewing traditions.

Bob: So this study gives us an amazing snapshot of what’s going on in the kombucha world. But it’s just one piece of the puzzle.

Sally: Absolutely.

Bob: And now it’s time to tackle the big question. Does kombucha actually live up to all those health claims?

Sally: We’ve been hinting at it all episode, but get ready, because next we’re diving deep into what the science really says about kombucha and our health.

>> At this point, the dialog allows room to insert a sponsor message if required.

Bob: And we’re back, ready to unravel the truth about kombucha’s health benefits. We’ve heard the hype. Now let’s look at the science.

Sally: We’ve already established that just because kombucha contains live microbes, it’s not a guaranteed ticket to perfect health.

Bob: Right. You’re not going to suddenly morph into a health guru after a bottle of kombucha. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of a healthy lifestyle. So let’s cut to the chase. What does the research actually say about kombucha’s impact on our health, especially when it comes to that buzzword we hear everywhere? Gut health.

Sally: It’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Can kombucha really transform our gut health? The truth is, the research is still in its early stages.

Bob: So it’s a bit of a waiting game for us impatient kombucha lovers.

Sally: In a way, yes, there have been some promising findings, particularly from animal studies.

Bob: OK, I have to ask. We talkin’ in lab mice sipping on tiny bottles of kombucha again.

>>Only one paper in the Reference Section – [7] – refers to studies on mice. Nowhere in the main body are they mentioned. The audio tool seemed to have chosen this because it is an amusing aspect for the bots to discuss.

Sally: You know it. These studies have shown that kombucha can lead to changes in the gut microbiome of mice, which is pretty cool. But, and this is a big but, what happens in mice doesn’t always translate perfectly to humans.

Bob: Of course, because mice probably aren’t choosing kombucha for its complex flavor profile. So we need more research, particularly research involving actual humans, to really say for sure. What about other potential benefits? I’ve heard whispers about kombucha’s antioxidant power. Is there any truth to those claims?

Sally: Now, here’s where things get really interesting. Remember how we talked about tea being a primary ingredient in kombucha?

Bob: Yeah, and tea, especially green tea, is practically synonymous with antioxidants.

Sally: Exactly. Tea contains naturally occurring compounds called polyphenols, which are known for their antioxidant properties.

Bob: Antioxidants, those are the good guys that help protect our bodies from damage, right?

Sally: Yes, exactly. And because kombucha is brewed with tea, it inherits those beneficial polyphenols. In fact, studies have shown that kombucha can actually have a higher antioxidant capacity than plain, unfermented tea.

Bob: So even if we’re not sure about the whole gut health thing yet, those tea polyphenols are still bringing some antioxidant power to the table.

Sally: It seems that way. However, more research is needed to determine whether those impressive antioxidant levels in kombucha actually translate into tangible health benefits for humans. It’s one thing to see it in a lab and another to see it play out in real life.

Bob: So, it might not be a magic bullet, but it could be a tasty way to up your antioxidant intake, all thanks to its tea-based origins. And hey, even if those gut health benefits haven’t been completely proven yet, there’s no harm in enjoying a refreshing beverage that just might be giving our gut microbiome a little TLC.

Sally: I wholeheartedly agree. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll have definitive proof that those live and active cultures are working their magic within us. Until then, we can savor those complex flavors and appreciate the fact that some of life’s most enjoyable things are the ones we’re still unraveling.

Bob: Beautifully said, it seems like every time we dive deep into the world of food and science, we surface with even more questions.

Sally: That’s the thing about scientific exploration. It’s a continuous journey of discovery.

Bob: And we’re thrilled you’re on this journey with us. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into the ever fascinating, wonderfully complex and often surprising world of kombucha. Until next time, happy sipping.

Although the A.I. audio does not cover all aspects of the research paper and has at least one ‘hallucination,’ it does an outstanding job highlighting the main findings in an entertaining and engaging manner. The tone and banter between the male and female voices are eerily similar to many morning TV shows and news programs in the States.

The post A.I. bots discuss the science of kombucha appeared first on 'Booch News.

Daniela Guilbert founded Bruja Sana Kombucha in 2015 after discovering the drink while living in Vancouver and visiting Northern California. On returning to Mexico, she was dismayed that kombucha was largely unavailable. A friend suggested that she start making it, and after experimenting with home brewing, she began the trial-and-error process of discovering the secrets of commercial production. At first, she was also making almond and cashew-fermented cheeses, but it quickly became a kombucha-only operation.

Bruja Sana means “Healthy Witch” – that’s “witch” as in medicine woman, not a Halloween witch.

She opened in the coastal town of Tulum, then moved inland to Valladolid in the Yucatán Peninsula or “Riviera Maya” area. Her factory employs members of the Mayan community.

Early sales were helped by tourists, who knew about kombucha and bought from her stall at the farmers’ market. The business grew rapidly. From an original set of ten 20L glass jars, she upgraded to a single 200L stainless steel tank, then increased to five of those. Demand created a need for more capacity, so she added a 1,000L stainless steel tank.

Bruja Sana now boasts an impressive 8,000L total capacity from two 3,000L tanks, one 1,000L, and five 200L. These sizes allow for flexibility in meeting the demand for different flavors. On average, they produce between 3,000 bottles per month, or 1,200L — so there is plenty of spare capacity for further growth. They are launching a larger 1L bottle and kombucha shots augmented with superfoods

Bruja Sana Kombucha is available in stores and restaurants in the Yucatan and can be ordered from their website for free shipping across Mexico. Prices (in MXN) include shipping:

6 pack $700.00
12 pack $1,178.00
24 pack $2,246.00

Daniela is delighted that there are now more kombucha brands than ever in Mexico and sees this as a sign that the market for healthy alternatives to soda is growing.

400 ml bottles are available in

Her best-selling flavors are the Original, followed by Ginger.

Hear Daniela tell the story of Bruja Sana Kombucha in this podcast interview.

The post Profile: Bruja Sana Kombucha, Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico appeared first on 'Booch News.

Thierry Tran authored a 3-part series in SYMBIOSIS Magazine:

(Back copies are available to order.)

He now offers independent consulting via Transverse Consulting, contact Thierry by messaging him on his LinkedIn profile. He has published over 20 research papers on topics such as ‘Identification of Key Parameters Inducing Microbial Modulation during Backslopped Kombucha Fermentation’ and ‘Polyphenols in kombucha: Metabolomic analysis of biotransformations during fermentation’ . This edited transcript of the podcast has been included since the audio quality of the phone interview was not as clear as hoped.

BOOCH NEWS: You’ve worked with kombucha for seven or eight years. You’re no longer a graduate student or postdoc. Are you working in a university, or what is your occupation?

THIERRY TRAN: I finished my postdoc about kombucha last September, and after that, I founded my own company, consulting about food science and specifically kombucha. I’m consulting for kombucha brewers, helping them set up new processes, and asking them questions about regulation, health claims, and anything related to kombucha products.

BN: When you say consulting, you focus on the biochemistry. You’re not consulting on marketing, sales, label design, or anything.

TT: Yes, absolutely. The process used to make a product is linked to its quality, and its quality is linked to every aspect of the product.

BN: No two kombucha companies are identical, right? They have their own fermentation process, source material, tea, sugar, and methods they might use. In the seven or eight years you’ve been working in this industry and focused on kombucha, what are some of the challenges, and what are some of the trends you’ve seen across commercial brands?

TT: In the last couple of years, it has been changing a lot. There are older and newer kombucha producers. The new companies learn from the older ones so that I see an evolution in the processes. In the beginning, there was a focus on the least complex, the simplest, and the most traditional processes possible—classical kombucha brewing like home brewing. Now I see that the kombucha brewers allow themselves to use more treatments such as pasteurization, filtration, and the addition of alternative sweeteners, as well as additional probiotics.

So, it has broadened the diversity of existing processes, and since kombucha is a new product, and there are no rules or regulations, anything can be done. Sometimes, this poses new challenges, so it’s a case-by-case situation where we have to work on very specific products that do not resemble another. So, it’s quite fascinating and quite complex at the same time.

BN: Yeah, you make an interesting point. You know I’m a home brewer. I’ve been doing it for 15 years or so in my basement. I have containers of two gallons each, and I ferment for a week, ten days. Maybe I put in some ginger or put it straight into the refrigerator; perhaps I want a little secondary fermentation, and I drink it. And for home brewers, there’s nothing else they need to do. There’s no reason for a home brewer to pasteurize, filter, or add other probiotics.

When you’re in the commercial market, however, some people will say you should never diverge from that. You should keep it authentic and do it exactly like a home brewer. But what are the trade-offs? Is it because people say they want a shelf-stable product that they need to pasteurize, or is it because they want to maintain consistency? What are some of the trade-offs you see? What are some of the things that drive those decisions by a commercial brewer?

TT: In the ideal world, we could transpose how we brew kombucha at home to an industrial setting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that, as is the case for any food. Actually, because you’re expected to fulfill regulations, you have to have a product that is safe, and that is expected to be reproducible. That’s in conflict with the traditional process, which evolved as home brewing, and you don’t have the same expectancies. That conflicts with what both consumers and retailers expect.

So, in more detail, if you transpose your home brewing to an industrial setting, you have issues of flavor,  quality, and stability. A stable product may rely on the cold chain or not. And if not, then you must use pasteurization or filtration. And the question is, is it traditional when you do that? Is it still a traditional product?

And since there is no proper definition of what traditional kombucha is, since there is no regulatory framework to say it is or is not, it’s up to the brewers to decide if they agree with this practice and if they choose to use it. Because if not, they might not sell their product as easily as they want because the market and the food chain is as it is. And it’s also the same question with probiotics. If we [add] probiotics, is it still traditional kombucha?

But if you don’t use probiotics, you’re not, in Europe, allowed to have claims of probiotics on your label. So, it’s a matter of representation and decisions from the brewers, at least before [new] regulations are applied.

BN: Wow. Well, there’s a lot to unpack there. One thing to clarify is adding probiotics. Specifically, are there regulations that if you don’t add probiotics like bacillus coagulants, I think it’s called, or “live cultures” after secondary fermentation, you won’t able to say on the label that it contains probiotics? Is that correct?

TT: Yeah, absolutely. You have different options. There are lots of probiotics that exist —  yeast or bacteria — but those are specific strains that are recognized by the regulations. For example, in the European Union, you have a list of bacterial and fungal strains recognized as probiotics. And suppose you don’t add them to the product in sufficient population of live microorganisms. In that case, it cannot be recognized as probiotics because, for now, the microorganisms used for kombucha fermentation have not been proven individually to bring health benefits. They are not considered probiotics, so no health claims can be applied to those products.

BN: I see. It’s something that, again, the home brewer wouldn’t do, but they’re not trying to meet any labeling requirements. You concluded your series in SYMBIOSIS talking about techniques for elevating the flavor quality of kombucha.

When a commercial kombucha is processed, and they make the trade-offs, if you like, or they think about achieving stability, where do flavor and taste come into that? If they say sugar-free, but that means they’ve added stevia, or they say shelf-stable, so they’ve pasteurized or filtered. Do you see the challenges for commercial kombucha brewers in becoming distinctive and consistent in terms of flavor and taste? How does that play in terms of the chemistry?

TT: So, for stability, there is the question of, do I rely on the cold chain? Is that sufficient for me to ensure that the quality, the sensory quality, and the chemical and microbiological quality will be sustained during the product’s shelf life? There are decisions to be made. If you decide to apply physical treatment, such as filtration or pasteurization, for example, it will impact the product’s flavor. When I say flavor, it also encompasses the visual aspect because when you filter, you will change the beverage’s turbidity or cloudiness.

And so, this has to be anticipated, which means that, okay, you are working hard to perfect your flavoring and select the right ingredients. Still, you must also test how it will evolve with the shelf life and how it will react to any treatment you intend to apply. So that must be considered. Sometimes, there is a compromise between what you’re seeking in terms of flavor and what you must do for your product to stay stable over time.

Some compromises would be satisfactory for the consumer. I want to add that, as producers, you have a certain idea of how your product would taste. But in the end, it’s also the consumers who will buy it, and it’s a good idea to ask the consumers, for example, by sensory testing, what they prefer. It must be both. It doesn’t have to be just the producers or the consumers, but a place in between that will satisfy both of them.

BN: Yeah, that’s great. Well, this has been a very interesting conversation. One final question from your perspective—having been involved in a very, very detailed scientific basis in this industry—where do you think this market will be in the future?

TT: Okay, so we know that there are market projections until 2029, and they plan for the market to almost double, I think. It’s a very dynamic market worldwide. I think there will be regional discrepancies. In France, I’m not sure this product will penetrate the market as well as in other countries. Many things will rely on marketing, but also on science because I know that there is a lot of research at the moment about the health benefits of fermented food.

In fermented food, you have microorganisms. They can be live, they can be dead, and they transform the food. So, new metabolites with potential good or bad effects change the composition that might bring something for human health. And we might have discoveries that change how we consider fermented food in general, including kombucha. Depending on those discoveries, depending on this research, maybe we can expect new things from those fermented foods in terms of health benefits, but not as individual products that will solve all your health issues, but rather as public recommendations.

That’s something that I feel inspired by—that governments would recommend consuming fermented food in general, without focusing on kombucha specifically, to bring health benefits to the whole population. I think this kind of perspective can really boost the consumption of kombucha, but it will also boost other foods, and that’s why I don’t want to dislocate kombucha, the trends of kombucha, from the trends of other fermented foods. I think we can really expect a lot from science and research in the future, and that would be, in my opinion, if it happened, the biggest shift in the consumption and market for kombucha.

BN: Well, I think that would be an amazing change, and I congratulate you on your years of research and being one of the world’s experts on kombucha. It’s been great talking with you. Good luck with your consulting, as you now offer your services to people. I’ll put the link to your company on the website, and it’s good luck and bonne chance.

TT: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Click on the podcast to hear original audio of this conversation.

The post Interview: Dr. Thierry Tran, Dijon, France appeared first on 'Booch News.

On the last day of a two-week road trip from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland and back, I was fortunate to arrive in Fort Bragg when the Wednesday Farmers’ Market was on. I came across Michelle’s booth, where she was selling her fermented products.

Michelle Costa ferments kombucha, jun, kimchee, kvass, six varieties of sauerkraut, hot sauce, and other pickles in the small town of Willits, Mendocino County, California. She sells her Mendo Ferments products in markets and stores around the region. The company was founded 11 years ago.

Her journey began in 1983 when her high school boyfriend’s sister brought a “mushroom” back from Alaska. They brewed the tea in a ceramic pot and enjoyed the tea for its refreshing flavor without a second ferment. She carried her mushroom to Hawaii, where it thrived in the warm weather. Eventually she stopped brewing, not knowing how popular kombucha would become. She reconnected with fermented beverages in Oregon in 2001. She tasted Jun, made with honey and brewed with beneficial herbs and uplifting spices, and immediately fell in love with it. By 2013, she had made the transition from home to commercial brewer.

She rents space at the Little Lake Grange shared commercial kitchen in Willits.

In addition to the Hibiscus Jun, Root Brew, Beet Ginger, and Purple Butterfly kombucha on offer this month, seasonal flavors include Chaga Chocolate Rose and Candy Cap (mushroom) Jun. She uses a variety of green and black teas as a base.

As well as Fort Bragg she sells at the Ukiah and Willits markets and is stocked at several local stores. The Shanachie Pub in Willits has her kombucha on tap.

The podcast was recorded at a busy time in the market, where customers sought out her fermented goodies.

The post Profile: Mendo Ferments, Willits, California appeared first on 'Booch News.

It’s Alive Kombucha is located on the far north coast of California in the remote college town of Arcata. For the past 11 years, the family-owned business has supplied regular and hard kombucha to the region. They now distribute from the northern counties as far south as the San Francisco Bay Area.

The journey started in 1992 when owner Jeri started home-brewing kombucha in Big Sur, where she lived at that time. Her husband Keil was a musician, and they felt the need to live a more balanced life centered around the Arcata community. They are helped by daughters Vivian, Kiana, and Sadie.

In 2012, they opened the first kombucha bar in Northern California in their production facility. This became a focus for the community where kombucha and living foods were available, including hard kombucha, kimchi, jun, beet kvass, water kefir, chai, sauerkraut, pickles, bone broth, and apple cider vinegar shots. They were at the forefront of educating people about kombucha, with seven flavors on offer. Their bar closed during COVID, but they made safe pickup available on the porch. Distribution of draft kombucha has now switched to commercial bars and restaurants in the area. It’s Alive Kombucha is now available in Whole Foods markets across Northern California, as well as at the Berkley Bowl and in dozens of stores and cafes.

Jeri experienced some initial push-back from bars that carry alcohol, but their reputation has grown and more owners see the value in offering patrons an alternative to booze.

It’s Alive Kombucha on tap and in the chiller at the Arcata North Coast Co-Op

They offer Pacific Hop, Lemon, Apple, and Golden Lion’s Mane. They use Yerba Mate as the tea base for all their kombucha, appreciating the alkalinity of between six and seven pH which has the potential to counteract the acidity of the stomach, which in turn helps prevent digestive issues. The glass bottles have a twist-off metal cap in preference to plastic as a more environmentally favorable alternative.

In April, It’s Alive Kombucha won Best Barrel Aged Specialty Brew for their Redwood Roots hard kombucha and had a runner-up with their Pomegranate-Rose for best overall specialty brew at the Battle of the Brews in Santa Rosa: a craft beer contest!

Check out the podcast to listen to the story of It’s Alive Kombucha in Jeri’s own words.

The post Profile: It’s Alive Kombucha, Arcata, California appeared first on 'Booch News.