Expert Article

Enjoy the Rot

The art behind the kombucha craze

Imagine- you’re a college dropout looking to grow your own small business. You’re health conscious but you enjoy the occasional medical spliff accompanied by a cold beer. Your friends always refer to you as the “kush guru hippie friend.” What better way to fulfill your dreams than to start your own kombucha brewery? You’ve been drinking it for years! But what even is it? It’s hip. It’s healthy. But what are those little pulp bits in the bottle? How does it get such umami? You begin your market research and find that there is a whole world behind this popular drink.

Like any millennial, you start your research on Google and stumble upon a recipe that looks simple enough…

       Tea (green or black)

       Starter tea*

       Water

       Sugar

       Fruit or herbs (optional)

       SCOBY*

       1 Gallon growler

       Several 16 oz sealable bottles

       A funnel

To begin, brew a batch of tea using 3.5 quarts of water; brew as concentrated as you like. Once the tea is cool add the starter tea to kickstart your batch. This is where you can get creative and add fruits or herbs like strawberries, lavender or rosemary. Add about a cup of regular granulated sugar depending on desired sweetness. Transfer this liquid to the sealed growler and allow fermenting for about 7-10 days. Longer fermentation increases alcohol content and the vinegar taste. During these days the bacteria and yeast of the SCOBY will feed on the sugar and excrete carbon dioxide and alcohol. This carbonates the drink and gives it the umami so many of us are addicted to. Small pulp bits will collect at the bottom as the SCOBY attempts to regenerate.

* Starter tea is a small amount of tea from a previous kombucha batch, which helps to jumpstart the fermentation process.

* To properly age, the tea must have a SCOBY (aka mother aka culture). It is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, which sits like a mat on the top of a brew batch.

The Culture of Cultures

So, you got your SCOBY, which proved to be an adventure in and of itself. A SCOBY is not something that can be purchased at your local Whole Foods or anywhere for that matter. To grow this culture is difficult and takes time; thus you were forced to engage, in person, with people in the your local fermentation community. Most brewers find their SCOBY this way, so you did too. You found another kombucha connoisseur, Brad Leone from the Bon Appétit test kitchen. Brad gave you some tips and a piece of his SCOBY. You still aren’t quite sure how to handle the SCOBY, so you ‘Youtube’ it. You run into Brad, again!

But you still struggle. Your first batch exploded, your second batch tasted like vinegar, and the third would be a plain embarrassment to try to sell. You begin to ponder the sophistication of food creation.

In the modern world we have been conditioned to believe it is normal to go to the grocery store, purchase a shrink wrapped pork chop and not wonder whether it may contain bacteria that could sicken us or where it came from. This puts a dangerous amount of trust in organizations like the US Food and Drug Administration, Food Safety and Inspection Service, and the United States Department of Agriculture. Why let government run agencies decide what you put in your body? This, among other reasons for distrust in our current government, has increased the popularity of intentional living--  the constant shaping of your life according to your specific values. Today, many people try to reduce plastic consumption, grow their own food, live in tiny homes, spend less, and enjoy more. With every purchase made, you must imagine where the product came from, where it will go and how it aligns with your beliefs.

You begin to realize that, even though you lack the time to grow all your meals, fermentation is the perfect outlet for you to get closer to intentional living. You must check on your product every other day, get to know it, and understand its processes. You see every ingredient that goes into it and you know where it will end up. You must take down every move you make in order to repeat your long awaited perfect batch. This experience, you find, is much more rewarding than that bottle of kombucha you bought at Whole Foods.

Eating Like a Millennial

Between 2008 and 2009 millennials expanded the possibilities of ‘trendy’ diets-- for example, US kombucha sales quadrupled from $80 million to $324 million (Margulis, Sagan). But this explosion of popularity did not happen just because of a trend. The health benefits of fermented foods-- like kombucha, include improved digestion, detoxification, increased immunity and enhanced overall health. Though these claims are often exaggerated and should be faced with a level of skepticism, the probiotics present in the foods are scientifically proven to be helpful especially to the gut and even improved immunity in the lungs. Probiotics are the tiny microorganisms that promote movement in the gut by targeting the microbes in the digestive system. The good bacteria found in many fermented foods have shown “the importance of commensal microbiota in regulating immunity in the respiratory mucosa” (Xu, Gordon). Commensal microbiota is the bacteria that allows our bodies, the hosts, to live with potentially harmful bacteria while reducing inflammatory responses and mucus in the lungs. 

Millennials are obsessed with food, and as sustainability becomes the forefront of responsible living, eating habits begin to align as well. According to a survey conducted by the USDA in 2017, millennials are much less likely to purchase white or red meats and grains than preceding generations (Kuhns, Saksena). Today eating is so much more than what tastes good, it has transcended into a sustainability practice and what is best for the body.

The Student Becomes the Master

We often like to think of ourselves as the most evolved species, but as we continue to distance ourselves from the creation of our own food, we lose sight of the reality. These organisms have coevolved with us in a mutually beneficial relationship (Pollan). We facilitate this process of fermentation where, when given not too much heat, but not too much cold, not too much light, but not too much darkness, a living organism can be created. The miracle of life!

When you embarked on your kombucha journey, you completed all the essentials. You read the fermentation bible aka “The Art of Fermentation,” you acquired a SCOBY, and you spent weeks of trial and error. You thought you would simply brew the drink and sell it small scale until your business grew. After your readings, you learn that more than kombucha is fermented, including all your favorite indulgences: wine, chocolate, bread, beer, cheese... 

Your new friend Brad later introduces you to the joys of fermenting milk for cheese, cucumbers for pickles, and chilis for hot sauce. As you gain positive feedback from friends and family, you sense great profitability in this business. Your main focus is selling your kombucha in grocery stores, but your passion takes over and you begin to sell your cheeses, sauces, and pickles at local farmer's markets. Not too large, not too small, profitable, sustainable, and responsible, you run the business of your dreams. Your small step into living intentionally became a full blown career seamlessly and now you are the one encouraging others to ferment.

Works Cited

BonAppetitDotCom. “How to Brew Your Own Kombucha with Brad | It's Alive | Bon Appetit.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Oct. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng2zOFADe0s

Jian Xu and Jeffrey I. Gordon, “Honor Thy Symbionts,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(18):10452(2003).

Katz, Sandor Ellix. “The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World: Sandor Ellix Katz, Michael Pollan: 9781603582865: Amazon.com: Books.” Amazon, Chelsea Green Publishing, www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X.

Kuhns, Annemarie, and Michelle Saksena. “Food Purchase Decisions of Millennial Households Compared to Other Generations.” United States Department of Agriculture, Dec. 2017, www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/86401/eib-186.pdf?v=43097.

Margulis and Sagan (1986), 16.

Pollan, Michael. “The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World: Michael Pollan: 8580001053745: Amazon.com: Books.” Amazon, Amazon, www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-View-World/dp/0375760393