'Booch News

Curro Polo is currently pursuing an industrial PhD in the Basque Culinary Center program, with the academic guidance of Harvard University. His research project is taking place at Ama Brewery, where he is on the R&D team with Chef Ramón Perisé Moré who we interviewed recently. Curro is exploring the fascinating world of microbiology as it applies to beverages. We’d met at the 2024 KBI conference in Reno, Nevada, where Curro and I were both Kombucha Kup judges. At that time, he was finishing up his Master’s in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts at Harvard. I reported on his Master’s thesis, Kombucha: A Word on Metamorphosis, in March 2025.

Curro has launched a campaign to fund the first experiments of his PhD project: Open Flavor: Modeling Fermentation Through Open Science. The goal is to scale and model fermentation processes for the No/Lo (low and no alcohol) beverage category using open science and open source tools. The idea is to rethink fermentation beyond traditional beer and wine, exploring substrates like teas, and to make all methods, data, and tools openly available. He will utilize platforms such as the Pioreactor, an open source mini bioreactor. Expanding the cluster will enable him to conduct stronger, reproducible experiments that benefit both science and industry.

The Pioreactor is an affordable and user-friendly bioreactor that is flexible and easy to scale. It’s an open source tool for controlled micro-fermentations where variables such as pH, oxygen, temperature, and agitation can be precisely managed. Micro-fermentations of 20ml not only provide fast, cost-effective, and reproducible data generation but also create a foundation for predictive models that can be scaled to industrial production. This approach brings both scientific rigor and competitive advantages to the No/Lo industry.

A bioreactor is basically a machine that helps you to create an environment where you can control temperature, the movement, or whatever liquid is inside. You can also control what kind of other liquids you would put in the liquid for a pumping system. And then it also has a system, which is called optical density, that it measures how fast your cells are growing in that liquid, right? Because there’s many ways to approach fermentation, right? How I like to imagine fermentation is like a system, there’s a box and in that box you have a liquid, and that liquid has different compounds.

Initial work will focus on three non-Saccharomyces yeasts relevant for No/Lo beverages. We will systematically vary temperature, pH, oxygen, stirring speed, and tea substrate to assess strain performance. Growth curves and CO₂ production, measured directly in the Pioreactor, will provide high-resolution insights into metabolic activity and fermentation dynamics. These datasets will support the first generation of predictive models, later validated against 500 L and 2000 L fermentations to test reproducibility and scalability. Positive and negative controls will anchor results, ensuring the models capture strain-specific behavior and guide cost-effective, science-based innovation in the No/Lo sector. The fermentation is studied in 40 ml vials, where 10-30 ml of liquid ensures the liquid-air interface is optimized and tubing remains clear of the liquid.

Curro reached his goal of $2,564 on September 22, allowing him to expand the current cluster from nine Pioreactors to 15, and conduct experiments with five variables in triplicate.

Here’s his description of the project:

The whole idea of the project is not to create a product but rather to test a statistical model. You can think of any mixed fermentation as a party where different guests are wearing unique perfumes. If I had a sensor that could detect each perfume, I could assume which guest is doing what and maybe even predict their behavior. I will give you an example with a very reduced consortia: Imagine you have a sweet tea with a yeast strain (that produces CO₂) and also a bacterial strain (let’s assume that it only produces lactic acid). Well, if I ferment the tea with 10g/L of glucose and take samples at the end of the fermentation (where there is 0g/L of glucose left), I can start drawing hypotheses. If the pH was very high, then the CO₂ must be very high as well (more glucose went into CO₂ production by yeast rather than into acid production by bacteria) etc… the key goal is to give a unique “ID” card to each microorganism, to see their behavior during the experiment in terms of activity (more activity of “x” microorganism means more flavor development of “x” compound).  The ultimate goal is to develop a system through the Pioreactors that could be potentially implemented in other laboratories, breweries, and so on, and to predict and model fermentation.

However, the campaign still has 28 days to go, and any additional funds that are donated (hint!) will be used for system upgrades.

Curro and I discuss his research.

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Ama Brewery produces a pét-nat tea brewed using local spring water from the Izarraitz Massif in the Basque Country, and high-quality tea and herbs. Pét-nat, an ancient method of making sparkling wine, is short for pétillant naturel, where the wine is bottled while it’s still undergoing its first fermentation, capturing the carbonation from the remaining yeast and sugar that creates bubbles and the structure inside the bottle–a process generally thought to have originated in Limoux, in France’s Languedoc, as far back as the 16th century.

The brewery team of fine dining chefs, artisan wine makers, scientists, craftsmen, and tea expert Henrietta Lovell, is proud of producing sophisticated, low-alcohol drinks. At 1.5 and 2.7ABV, it’s high enough to be taxed as an alcoholic drink. The current research scientist, Curro Polo, who we interviewed in March, works with co-founder and chef Ramón Perisé Moré of Mugaritz Restaurant, San Sebastian.

I met co-founder, Chef Ramón Perisé Moré at the recent Stanford Fermented Food Conference, where he updated me on developments at Ama Brewery.

Ramón runs the R&D department of Mugaritz and is passionate about natural yeasts and spontaneous fermentation. When a German kombucha enthusiast sent him his first SCOBY through the mail, he started exploring the possibilities. Some of his early bottles exploded after he inadvertently left them to age for several weeks, and he realized that aging was the key. Those that remained had reached the point of excellence he was looking for.

We believe the future of drink pairings in restaurants will challenge the status quo. Low and non-alcoholic alternatives have become part of traditional wine pairings and have given mixologists more to play with. Our bottle-aged kombucha is as complete a drinking experience as any fine wine, beer, or sake. Less alcohol – more experience.

What began as a guerrilla group of friends brewing new-wave, aged kombucha in a garage lock-up on a San Sebastian back street, evolved into a fully-fledged R&D facility. Using high-quality tea and herbs, Ama pét-nat tea is brewed with pure Basque mountain water. Its exceptionally low minerality highlights the complex flavors developed during fermentation.

Depending on the composition of these infusions and the action of the SCOBYs, the micro-batches are ready for bottling between one and three weeks later, when simple sugars, yeasts, and bacteria have achieved the right balance. The closed environment of the bottle means the bacteria are starved of air and are unable to acidify the drink excessively. The yeasts, meanwhile, continue turning simple sugars into bubbles.

As the bubbles mature they decrease in size, becoming more integrated into the liquid. Aromas intensify, flavors harmonize, and the mouthfeel becomes silky. The micro-batch kombucha is released to market after a minimum of six months of bottle-aging at room temperature, when it has become more rounded and each infusion has developed a distinct character, resulting in an exceptional drinking experience.

The resulting Amas are lightly sparkling, richly flavored, and elegant – an expression of the terroir and craftsmanship that go into them.It is an ambient beverage that doesn’t need to be kept cool, as it is filtered to delay fermentation.

Ama Brewery emphasizes that water is a key ingredient.

We believe in a terroir of water consisting of an environment, a geology, a climate, a culture and ways of doing things that only happen in this place and time and have been gradually moulded over the centuries. The plants we use to create our drinks express the regionality of the places they come from: sencha tea from Shizuoka, in Japan, lemongrass from Sri Lanka, green tea from Malawi, milk oolong from Taiwan… grown by people who, despite the great distances and cultural differences, share the same vision vis-à-vis sustainability, ecological agriculture and the search for taste. However, it is water, the element that makes up 95% of our pét-nat tea, that – as happens with the kuras in Japan – anchors us in our own land, linking us through it to the foothills of the massif of Izarraitz, where we work and live with that mountainous, marine and karstic landscape in which small farmers, stockbreeders and fisherfolk lay the basis for the culinary identity of the entire country.

Ama sells small batch varieties in 750ml champagne-style bottles priced from Euro 24 to 35 ($28 to $41), but doesn’t actually market their beverage as ‘kombucha’.

We don’t call it kombucha. So the word kombucha appears in the back label, in the third or fourth line. We try to stay away from the word kombucha because, as I said, the expectations that we can create about what’s inside the bottle. We made a label that you cannot see because we understand that we made a beverage that doesn’t exist! So that was the idea. Some people think that it was a mistake to make a bottle with no branding because you cannot see Ama anywhere in the bottle.

Indeed, some of the labels are anonymous.

Inspired by Basque sculptors Chillida and Oteiza, the wonderful folks at @foolagency developed the motifs that adorn our stunning labels, a reflection of our roots in the Basque Country.

The information is listed on the back.

Other varieties have more distinctive labels. Only 251 bottles of this Pét-nat Tea were made, using Kirishima Sencha Zairai — a rare tea grown from seed (not cuttings) by the Hayashi family in southern Japan. Each plant is distinct, resulting in a more complex and nuanced expression of its unique terroir. The label by Jorge Elósegui Astrain (@estudioprimo ) reflects the collaboration — two circles, their overlap marked in green as the tea leaf, with soft wave-like edges echoing traditional tea imagery.

Another is Rosé, Elusive Cuvée Vol. 5, a groundbreaking blend of low-alcohol sophistication, that offers a complex harmony of red berry and vegetal notes with well-defined tannins and delicate bubbles. The bright green leaves of the Asatsuyu variety are gently nurtured under shade for three weeks before their late-April harvest. This process intensifies their natural sweetness, giving rise to the rare Tennen Gyokuro, which we infuse with our local Alzola spring water and tint with a touch of elderberry juice. Two hundred sixty bottles were produced, ideal for pairing with fatty dishes, as well as game.

Other varieties on the Ama Brewery website include:

I sat down with Chef Ramon at the recent Stanford Fermented Food Conference and asked him to share the story of Ama Brewery.

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Nirraj Satish Manek and his wife, Kajall, teamed with his friend and partner, Chef Niyati Rao of Ekaa, a Mumbai fine-dining restaurant, who introduced him to kombucha. His 18-year career at financial behemoths Citibank, H&R Block, and elsewhere gave him the background to spot untapped opportunities. From his first sip of kombucha, he wondered why this natural, gut-friendly beverage wasn’t readily available in India.

SBOOCH was launched in July 2024 and, within a year, was named ‘Kombucha of the Year’ at the London Beer Competition for their Rasam flavor in the non-alcoholic category.

Production is outsourced to a third-party in Pune. Nirraj has refused to compromise on quality, even if it meant tighter budgets and slower scaling. By forging smart partnerships and maintaining lean operations, they have captured shelf space at an unexpectedly fast pace. People can order from their website for pan-India shipping (free for orders above Rs 1,500) and also from Amazon India and Blinkit.

Over the next three years, they plan to expand distribution to every major Indian city and enter select global markets. They are in a new funding round to support those plans.

The US and Canada are a big market for kombucha. And we are in the process of penetrating that market, as well as a few Asian markets and the UK, because of the UK and India tie-up. We are trying to take advantage of that as well. These are the three major markets we are looking at.

Instead of bombarding consumers with jargon, the SBOOCH team took a grassroots approach — organizing free tastings, using familiar flavors to ease people in, and telling stories that connected kombucha to India’s own fermentation traditions.

The early days were not without challenges. The biggest? Educating the market. For many Indians, fermented drinks either belonged to the realm of home remedies or were dismissed as “acquired tastes.” SBOOCH is marketed as a lifestyle drink aimed at what Nirraj sees is “a huge gap in a $1.6 trillion beverage landscape globally, where you and I can’t even name one beverage except kombucha which someone can pick from the shelf, and is completely clean and unadulterated.” On the one hand, potential customers range “from a five-year-old toddler to a 95-year-old senior and above, who can enjoy it guilt-free.” On the other hand, the category leaders in terms of adoption are Gen Zs and Millennials.

In today’s world, a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old, or a 40-year-old in the house might not be exposed to the external developments in terms of food and beverages as much as Gen Z is. So they are the carriers of our brand, any new brand. That is a core target, and as we all know, this generation is one of the healthiest, aspiring generations. They are the most non-alcoholic consuming generation over the last century, based on the data.

Their Instagram has content that appeals to the younger generation.

Bollywood actor and fitness icon Sunil Shetty is a brand ambassador.

With just 1–4g of sugar per 100ml, and an ambient shelf life of up to 18 months, achieved by filtration, with no chemicals or preservatives, SBOOCH is a balance of flavor, wellness, and reach that gives the brand an edge in both the Indian and international markets. Chef Niyati’s handcrafted blends celebrate the rich regional flavors of India.

Naga Pepper (Nagaland), is a foraged (not farmed) green pepper ingredient is a hybrid of Asian flavors such as Kaffir Lime and Sichuan.

Rice & Pandan’s (Odisha), “The Aromatic”, highlights include “Annapurna Ke Patte” which is what pandan leaves are often called in Odisha. Witness how rice and pandan, two mainstays of the eastern state, combine in a bottle.

Tulsi Lemon (Uttar Pradesh), “The Sacred” is inspired by the “Panchamrit” of Varanasi. The light bitterness of tulsi is masked by its herby notes and balanced by the perfect citrus of local lemons.

Rasam  (Tamil Nadu), “From the kitchens of south,” is inspired by the original Madurai Rasam. This well-known flavor is neither too sour, nor too spicy but just right with its blend of tomato, hing, tamarind and earthy spices.

Koshimbir (Maharashtra), “A salad in a bottle,” is inspired by its namesake, the household Maharashtrian accompaniment, made using tomato, cucumber & coriander.

Gor Keri (Gujarat), “Straight from Nani’s house.” An additive staple in Gujarati pickle, this flavor captures the essence of the sweet, tangy, and slightly spicy Gor Keri.

We have Chef Niyati, and because of her, we were able to create these amazing flavors, which people have never experienced in a bottle before. That is the unique thing, transforming an ingredient-based restaurant into an ingredient-based beverage that touches base with the Indian palate. All ingredients used in SBOOCH are real; there are no nature-identical flavors. We use only all-natural, real ingredients.

Nirraj shares the SBOOCH story and his vision for the future in this podcast.

The post Profile: SBOOCH, Mumbai, India appeared first on 'Booch News.

Robin Singh had everything he wanted and more—well-settled in the US, financial freedom, married to the love of his life—except he was not happy. It was in his pursuit of happiness that he stumbled across his purpose. He found what he had been looking for when he started Peepal Farm, an animal rescue center and kombucha brewery.

Peepal Farm is an animal rescue organization and an organic farm located in Dhanotu Village, Himachal Pradesh, with the primary objective of healing and protecting animals and transforming their suffering.

The project employs 60 people in projects that include animal rescue, animal sanctuary, food and beverage products, and an animation studio. The animation studio produces short clips to raise awareness of their vision and bring lasting change by changing how people think about animals. They have 50 to 80 million views monthly.

The founder’s philosophy is stated on their website:

Live to do maximum good; live while causing minimum harm. It’s our understanding that involuntary physical suffering is an absolute bad across all species; so reducing suffering and nurturing changes that reduce suffering is absolutely good.

This philosophy is explained in more detail in the newly published book Happiness Happens–the story of Robin’s journey from a difficult childhood in India to finding success as a tech entrepreneur in the States, who had everything in life except happiness. It was in his pursuit of happiness that he stumbled across purpose. It eventually took giving up on happiness and pursuing purpose before he realized that he had finally found what he had been looking for back in his homeland. The book describes what happened between his exit from his tech company and his use of the funds to start Peepal Farm.

As part of a quest to reach more people, spread their message, and support their program, Robin launched Peepal Farm Products. Starting with farm-grown herbs, the product line gradually expanded into a range of categories with a major aim in mind — to generate more employment for women and income for work with animals. Peepal Farm Products employs women of the village to make the products by hand. The team creates everything from vegan food to upcycled decor, skincare products, and delicious kombucha.

They sell a range of nutritious foods all prepared in small batches: Crunchy Peanut Butter, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate Spread, Vegan Snack, Vegan Muesli, Vegan Energy Bars, Vegan Body Butter Lavender, and Flourless Chocolate Cookies Sweetened with Dates and Jaggery. There are gift baskets and individual items for sale.

With an ethos of “Consume less, harm less”, they even encourage people NOT to buy their products! Indeed, they are one of the premier suppliers of SCOBYs and starter liquid for home brewers, allowing them to start enjoying their own kombucha rather than purchasing commercial. They have recipes and how-tos for almost everything they sell on social media. But for people who don’t have the time for that, they can buy the products knowing that they minimize waste and packaging, and all of the profits go towards saving animals.

A blend of cane sugar, black tea, and purified Himalayan water is fermented over a week or two, and shipped pan-India in plastic bottles, which are safer and easier to send than glass. The label tells the story.

The kombucha is shipped pan-India and can be ordered from their website. It’s also available in selected retail outlets in the Kangra region. In keeping with their founding philosophy, the purpose of the product sales, including kombucha, is to raise awareness of their cause, not just to generate income. The animals are the ultimate beneficiaries of the sales.

Robin shares the story of Peepal Farm in this interview.

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Suyra Prakash was introduced to kombucha while living in Denver, Colorado, in 2017, and he brought back a taste for it to India. However, he was unable to find good kombucha, so he started brewing it at home, working for a year until he got it right. His friends encouraged him to start selling. But Surya was not satisfied. His goal was to create a low-sugar kombucha that would still appeal to the Indian palate. Finally, at the end of 2021, he launched Heaven’s Elix, selling an authentic kombucha based on a green and black tea base.

I was not able to find a good product. I was unable to get good kombucha at an affordable rate anywhere. Either it was too expensive and good, or it was affordable and bad. So I decided to make my own at home and provide it to people in similar situations like mine. That’s how Heaven’s Elix Kombucha came about.

Their kombucha is brewed in five-liter glass jars. They have now grown to employ three people and ship pan-India.

We don’t filter our kombucha; ours is a live kombucha. We have worked with the delivery partner. They can ship pan-India within three to four days maximum. During shipping, it carbonates itself. We store it at the right temperature, and we have cold storage here. So we ship it at the right fermentation level. So once it travels, it carbonates on the go. And once you get it in your home, you let it sit it for one or two hours, get all the bubbles settled down, and then you have a physical kombucha in your hand.

Among the customers they meet at farmers’ markets are different groups. Some are health-conscious people into yoga or other fitness regimens. Then there are people avoiding processed foods or reducing sugar, counting calories with every meal. Another groups are the people who want a different type of cocktail or mocktail, which they can make with kombucha.

Surya has seen changes in customer acceptance over the past four years:

For the first two years we were in business, it was difficult. More than 50% of the people did not know what kombucha was. And the ones who knew, they were like, “Kombucha is not really my type of cup of tea. I’ve had kombucha before, I don’t like this.” But those are the people who I try to catch, and I try to give them a sample. And once they tried it, okay, this is better than the last one I had. But for the last two years, more people are learning about it. Now people are starting to know more about it and acceptance is growing.

They offer a wide range of flavors, including:

Sulaimani and Hops are the best sellers.

To facilitate shipping they have recently added kombucha in 250ml cans. These are currently on offer at a discount of Rps 518 for a 4-pack (usually Rps 740). The company pays the shipping costs.

Their kimchi is very popular. Spicy, crunchy, and authentically crafted. It was developed in response to customer demand. They also make two types of cookies. The Almond Cookies are nutty and sweet; the Butter Cookies use farm-fresh butter.

We are selling our cookies, using the proceeds to fund our kombucha. Since we are completely bootstrapped, we are not taking any money from outside. Cookies are easy to sell. Kombucha, you have to basically hold people and then you have to pour it in their mouth. But cookies, they will just sell like hot cakes.

They’ve offered classes in home brewing for the past year and have trained over 100 people,

Join us for an interactive, hands-on workshop where you’ll learn the secrets of making your own fizzy, flavorful, and gut-friendly kombucha from scratch.

What to Expect:

• Tasting Session: 20 mins – Try different kombucha flavors
• Brewing Session: 40 mins – Learn how to brew from scratch
• Q&A: 20-30 mins – Get your kombucha questions answered

Take Home With You:
1️⃣ A bottle of original kombucha (enjoy or use as a starter)
2️⃣ Instruction sheet to guide your future brews
3️⃣ Excel sheet to track your kombucha batches

Listen to the podcast to hear Surya tell the story of Heaven’s Elix.

The post Profile: Heaven’s Elix, Chennai, India appeared first on 'Booch News.

Honey Islam authored the recent 3-part Guest Post on Booch News How the New Indian Government Tax Reform Punishes Beverage Startups, which raised concerns about a 40% tax the Indian Government plans to impose on kombucha. This Profile and podcast interview tells the story of her company.

The story of Mountain Bee Kombucha began in 2016, at the very first Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. What started as a much-needed break from work became a turning point. At a workshop at the festival, Honey Islam, the founder of Mountain Bee Kombucha, first learned about what she called the “strange ferment” known as kombucha. She did not get a chance to drink it, but she was intrigued. Months later in Dallas, Texas she spotted bottles of kombucha lining the shelves at Whole Foods and tasted it for the first time. She then volunteered at a fermentation workshop in San Francisco led by chef Anne Marie Bonneau. She gifted Honey a piece of her SCOBY that she brought back to Bangalore. Reviving it took time and effort, and it barely survived the trip. But when it did, it felt like magic.

What began on a kitchen countertop slowly turned into a mission: to craft authentic, small-batch kombucha in India, with the same intention and wonder she felt in that first perfect sip. Mountain Bee Kombucha was born in 2018. At her first weekend at an area farmers’ market, she sold all 50 bottles in the first two hours.

She now has a team of six and sells 5,000 liters of kombucha a month, depending on the season, which is fermented in 300-liter stainless steel containers.

We source and ferment only the very best whole-leaf teas, working closely with trusted growers who share our passion for quality. All sample teas are carefully fermented, and only those that meet our highest standards of flavour and balance make it into our production process. From bold blacks to complex oolongs, every tea brings its own personality to the brew. Our brewing techniques extract their full expression, setting a strong foundation for the flavour complexity that we strive to achieve. We produce in small batches from brew to bottle, never outsourcing any part of our process. This hands-on, craft-driven approach ensures that every bottle reflects our standards, stories, and soul.

Mountain Bee has diverted over 50,000 bottles from landfills.

Our major contributor to the savings is our B2B partners. So unlike a lot of retail bottles that go one-way from the production house to the customer’s house, when we’re dealing with the businesses, we actually use returnable kegs and returnable bottles with our business partners. We don’t give them our retail bottles. So that’s the kind of ecosystem we’re trying to build and save on unnecessary packaging where we can. Customers are able to enjoy our fresh kombucha on tap, and enjoy different flavors that don’t see the retail shelves.

The Mountain Bee Kombucha taproom is an extension of their brewery, a space dedicated to kombucha enthusiasts, gut health and fermentation. Tucked away in the by-lanes of Indiranagar, it is a one-of-a-kind place to experience kombucha. Visitors can sample taproom-only flavors during a guided tasting where they learn about ingredients, fermentation techniques, and the art of non-alcoholic brewing. In addition to tastings, they offer Mixology workshops and Kombucha Brewing classes.

I felt that in order to build a community, we need to engage participants, not just as customers of kombucha, but also as practitioners themselves. Unless and until you know your product from that level, you wouldn’t understand or you wouldn’t want to consume it in the long run. So my motto for conducting workshops and tastings was to let people into the world of fermentation, into the world of kombucha, and tell them how amazing microbes and probiotics and natural fermentation could be.

We take a creative approach to our flavoring process, inspired by stories, memories, and a deep respect for ingredients. Each flavour is thoughtfully developed to highlight the complexity of ingredients in their fermented form rather than cover up the funk. Whether inspired by a season, a place, or a moment, our blends aim to evoke a feeling as much as a flavour.

The Original Booch: Crafted with Darjeeling’s finest Oolong, often called the Champagne of teas. This is kombucha in its purest form. No added flavours. No distractions. Just a beautifully complex kombucha that lets the tea and the craft speak for itself. A classic for a reason.

Food Pairing suggestion: Sandos, Sushi, Just by itself, ideally sipped in a flute.

Vanilla Brown: Smooth and surprisingly complex. Vanilla brings a rich, velvety depth to our sweet-and-sour kombucha base. It’s not vanilla-flavoured, it’s the real vanilla.

Food Pairing suggestion: Spicy biryani, onion samosa, cinnamon bun.

Singer Ginger: Zesty pick-me-up for any time of day. With a bold ginger bite and a smooth finish, this brew is equal parts refreshing and grounding. Great for digestion, your gut’s go-to, from morning to night.

Food Pairing suggestion: Pea-smash toast, tofu stir-fry.

Rose: Rosé all day, only better, and gut-loving too. Crafted with fermented plant extracts – organic rose, roselle petals, fennel seeds and long-leaf green tea, this brew delivers floral complexity with a sweet-tart twist. It’s elegant and uplifting.

Food Pairing suggestion: Spiced nuts, popcorn

Pineapple-Chili: A crowd favourite, bold, balanced, and seriously addictive. Perfect for first-time sippers, it blends juicy pineapples with a subtle kick of chilies and warm spices.

Food Pairing suggestion: Tacos, tortilla chips, Fettuccine Alfredo.

Flower ‘N Spice: This flavour is for the cinnamon lovers. Fermentation of green tea with spices brings a hint of playfulness in the final brew. A striking purple colour from butterfly blue-pea flower adds to the experience. Pro tip: Long sip with a straw to fully savour the warmth and nuance of the spices.

Food Pairing suggestion: Thai stir fry, dumplings, cinnamon cake, herby flatbreads.

Bangalore Blue Grape: Ode to Bangalore. Crafted with much loved GI-tagged Bangalore Blue Grapes grown in the city. Contains naturally occurring antioxidants from grapes and tea, probiotics and organic acids from fermentation. A bold, non-alcoholic nightcap with flavour and function.

Food Pairing suggestion: Pizzas, grilled fish/veggies, chili noodles.

Aloha Ananas: Aloha Ananas brings vacation energy to even the most random Monday. Fully fermented, easy to sip and perfect for first-timers. Made with juiciest pineapples from Kerela.

Food Pairing suggestion: Buttered sourdough, cheese, dark chocolate.

Pineapple-Chili is the best seller. It is a flavor that the Indian palate really, really enjoys. It has the right amount of sweetness and right amount of spice. They balance each other out beautifully. There’s no overpowering chili and there’s no overly sweet kombucha. It’s very, very good.
 

Honey has noticed significant generational changes in the customers she sells to over the past seven years. Gen Z are the trend setters.

Whatever changes that are happening in the industry is also led by external factors like the rise of Gen Z population, the rise of quick commerce, the rise of experiential moments. Back when I started, most of our audience was Millennials and even a little older population. And they would discover us through pop-ups or through Instagram. But now it is more about being present in pop-up events, collaborations, or being available on quick commerce. So all these touch points are driving the demand for kombucha.

The demography is changing quite a bit. Now there are more young people embracing kombucha, because one, they don’t want to miss out, and they’ve also prioritized gut health. And also the fact that they’re not drinking as much. So kombucha becomes a very obvious choice for them. So a lot of demand, a lot of dynamics like this are really pushing the consumption of kombucha, which was lacking before.

Honey shares the story of Mountain Bee Kombucha in this conversation.

The post Profile: Mountain Bee Kombucha, Bangalore, India appeared first on 'Booch News.

Ezhil Mathy discovered kombucha in 2022 and started brewing small batches in her kitchen. She was guided by the recipes in Hannah Crum’s Big Book of Kombucha that she customized for the Indian palate. In May, 2024 she announced on Instagram that Dramila Kombucha was available in Chennai cafes and restaurants. She’s now outgrown her kitchen and ferments in 10 L glass jars in a dedicated space. She is a one-person artisanal producer.

Chennai is one of India’s main cities with a population over over 12 million in the metro area. This makes it the fifth largest in the country. It’s located on the East coast, in South India.

She sources her teas from the Nilgiri Hills plantations located around the town of Ooty, Tamil Nadu. Teas from here are known for briskness, referring to lively fragrant flavors, a quality attributed to the climatic growing conditions.

Ezhil has seen the popularity of kombucha in India grow among a range of people.

There is a range of people trying kombucha. The younger crowd want non-alcoholic drinks. They’re not  even into drinking a lot of coffee, but they’re happy having a glass of kombucha. And then a lot of people working out at the gym, and for them this more like a post-workout drink. And I see a lot of people at the cafes, wanting to have kombucha because they feel it just helps their gut.

For all of these different groups, what is very important is the taste. It’s a taste that just grows on you. I think people are just opening up to it. And when they try it they say, “Oh yeah, I really like it!”

Ezhil delights in creating new flavors every month. Among the many she has listed:

Many of these incorporate regional ingredients and celebrate Indian culture.

My mango and cayenne pepper is a big hit. Vendors on Chennai’s East Coast Beach sell a snack called a Sundal, which has lentils and chickpeas spiced with a ginger-garlic-chili paste, coconut, and assorted toppings such as mango. So I picked out just one part of it and made a kombucha with mango, chili and tender coconut. I think it’s one of the best.

Ezhil shares the story of Dramila Kombucha in this interview.

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MAVI’s Pantry is a homegrown artisanal fermented food and beverage brand which makes gut-friendly functional products like kombucha, kimchi, kvas, ginger ale, kanji, and sauerkraut using local, seasonal and organic ingredients. They started with kombucha and it still is their flagship product.

MAVI’s is named after Meenakshi and her husband Vikram (MA+VI) who started out making kombucha in their home kitchen. They began selling at local farmers’ markets, where they sold out on their first day. Since launching the business in 2017 they have seen steadily increasing demand and now have a team of twelve.

While they were still a young company their appearance on the first season of the Indian version of Shark Tank in 2021 brought them national attention. Though their pitch was rejected by the “sharks” due to concerns over pricing and a belief kombucha was a narrow niche market, it gave them great exposure. Post-show, MAVI’s Pantry expanded aggressively—improving branding, retail shelf presence, listing on platforms like Amazon and taking online orders. The video of the episode (in Hindi) is available online.

From those early days in farmers’ markets they now sell pan-India. Despite being a naturally fermented, unpasteurized product, they have overcome the challenge of the lack of a robust cold chain in the country.

When we started, our idea was only to keep it in modern gourmet retail stores, A-plus stores as they are called. And because the clientele who shop there have refrigeration, it is not a problem. Retail stores, cafes, restaurants, and hotels are now our primary buyers. Yes, cold chain is a problem, but you know necessity is the mother of invention as they say, right?

So we’ve figured out tweaks and hacks to make sure that we can deliver kombucha before it needs to be refrigerated. When you make kombucha it’s naturally carbonated, and there are about two or three days before it needs to be refrigerated and it gets self-carbonated. So we use that time as a hack to transport it anywhere we want. And usually we figured out that in say around 48 to 72 hours, we can deliver it anywhere in India.

Vikram sees three groups of customers interested in kombucha in India.

We did an audience analysis when we were rebranding and we understood there were three different categories. One was the category where people were choosing fermented food because their doctors told them to eat healthy or their nutritionist told them to eat healthy or they figured out that fermented food was the way to go.

The other one is people who are seeking low sugar, natural beverages, etc, in general, because let’s say if you want to have a beer, like you want something to drink in the evening every day and you think, okay, instead of beer, if I can have a kombucha, maybe it’s better because there’s no alcohol involved. So that’s the second category.

The third one is the trending category, where people are drinking it just because kombucha is in. So I want to be cool and hence I drink kombucha every day.

These are the three major categories. Then there are other people who want to try, who just want to just keep exploring and seeing what works for them, what doesn’t work for them and everything. But eventually they settle down in the first or the third category.

Their tea comes from Korakundah in the Nilgiri mountains of southern India which boasts of being the highest organic tea estate in the world at 8,000 feet above sea level. The estate, founded in the early 1900s, is a pioneer in sustainable and organic tea cultivation, holding Organic, Fair Trade, and Rainforest Alliance certifications, and produces distinctively flavored black and green teas known for their fresh, clean, and floral notes, with the high-altitude environment contributing to a slower growth and more complex flavor development.

MAVI’s Kombucha is brewed in small batches using handpicked local ingredients and fermented naturally for 3–4 weeks, ensuring a perfectly balanced taste and maximum probiotic benefits. The slow fermentation process makes it healthy, flavorful, and suitable for the Indian gut microbiome.

Their flagship product is available in a number of flavors:

They offer workshops to teach people to make kombucha at home. They believe that once people understand the nuances behind kombucha they will become more discriminating.

My idea with doing workshops with our partners at restaurants, cafes, even online is to reach more and more people I can teach to make kombucha at home. And once they understand the nuances behind the kombucha, I hope that they never go and drink a mass-produced, shelf-stable, devoid of any probiotic, kombucha.

Hear Vikram tell the story of MAVI’s Pantry in this interview.

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An attendee at the Stanford Fermented Food Conference I wanted to meet was Aga Pokrywka the host of Ferment Radio, a fascinating and informative podcast series that began back in 2020 and has posted almost 50 episodes. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s a podcast with a noble mission:

Ferment Radio is a podcast series that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet. Together with people from the most diverse backgrounds, including science, gastronomy, and arts, we reflect, discuss, and bubble along with microbes in order to give legacy to plural perspectives. By letting our thoughts and beliefs ferment in the brine of shared discourse, we look for transformative paths to multispecies justice and well-being.

Like fermentation itself, a slow process that can turn the invisible into visible, the dialogues on Ferment Radio help us re-imagine societal transformations and rebuild relationships between species, people, disciplines and other notions we live by.

Aga has hosted a wide range of guests. A random sample includes:

David Zilber is the acclaimed author of The Noma Guide to Fermentation and Stanford Conference host. He was Aga’s guest on Episode #36, June 2023.

There are not that many people in the world who can say they have extensive hands-on experience working in different areas of that vast system. @david_zilber is definitely one of them. From a butcher shop in Toronto to the Fermentation Lab of the acclaimed restaurant @nomacph, and to the labs of @chr.hansen, a giant bioscience company in Hørsholm, Denmark, David Zilber has garnered multiple and fascinating perspectives on food and the system around it. Ferment Radio had the pleasure to talk with David in his own lab, where we reflected more about this incredible journey and his ever-evolving views on the food system that we are all part of.

I’ve added a three-minute extract from that episode to give you a taste of Fermentation Radio.

Tune into the Booch News podcast for my conversation with Aga at the Fermented Food Conference and the Zilber episode sample,

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The two-day conference wrapped up Friday afternoon with a Fermentation Festival where attendees gathered in the courtyard of the Clark Center to sample food and beverages from a variety of vendors.

I asked some of the attendees to share their impressions of the conference.

The best thing about this conference is… it’s the most interesting conference I’ve ever been to, and that says enough.

The best thing about this conference so far has definitely just been the interchange of ideas between everyone. It’s good to see a whole bunch of people from the culinary side versus the academic side versus the industrial side of things all getting together and discussing how we can make fermented foods better and more accessible to everyone.

My big takeaway from the conference is that we really learn and integrate information best with a group of really diverse people from different backgrounds and different experiences.

This conference has been incredibly refreshing to me. It’s one of the best conferences that I’ve actually ever been to. Really, that human storytelling element and the interface of the science, I think, is a key thing.

I’m a cancer epidemiologist, and my big takeaway from the conference is that fermented foods can potentially be beneficial for cancer outcomes, so I’m excited to follow that up in my research.

The most surprising thing I’ve heard about at the conference is that there’s no plant diet in the Arctic.

I’m really inspired by this whole conference. I just learned so much about the interaction between insects and microbes, and that was really inspiring and made me think about what other kind of interactions like that there are around the world and throughout history.

The most surprising thing I’ve heard at the conference is that miso was made in space.

I was super excited to hear people talking about the fact that fermented foods have such potential for health, but they also have to be delicious.

The most surprising thing I’ve heard at the conference is the use of ants to produce yogurt. Very excited about that.

The best thing about the conference is community.

Hear what the attendees found of interest — from Arctic foods to ant yogurt there was something for everyone!

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