Everything has its time. In the brewery, we don’t rush the fermentation process. We just leave nature take its course and when the kombucha is ready for bottling, well, then we bottle! I think that kind of philosophy grew out of the way we decided upon our first flavour. It took us a year to perfect, brewing batch after batch after batch. And for the last year that trusty original flavour with the green label is what we’ve been steadily brewing and stocking on shelves.
It’s strange in a way, most kombucha breweries launch with a plethora of flavours but I guess the way we grew from the ground up meant we had everything invested in one. So it’s a BIG DEAL for us to launch our second flavour!
We took our time too with this one because after working so hard and building up so much from the original one we wanted this one to be oh so yummy! If all those test batches at the start taught us anything, it was that the recipe had to be right. Kombucha has an added layer of complexity because it is a ‘living culture’ (we even put those words on the front of our bottles and the meaning is so much more but another time for that!). And as you brew batch after batch of a certain flavour, the scoby, bacteria and yeast take on a profile of their own. And that becomes more pronounced the more you brew with the same scoby. When you think about it, I could give you some of our scoby but you will never be able to brew the same kombucha as me because our cultures take on different bacteria and characteristics depending on how they are used, the environment they are in, the air, our homes, temperatures and the teas we use. Fascinating!
Time also got eaten up finding organic mangos and pineapples – at our scale it isn’t the easiest thing to to. At one stage I must admit I contemplated ditching the organic but then, I couldn’t have it on me to be adding pesticide laden fruit to our drinks! So back to the search it was.
Eventually we sourced a steady supply for them. We wanted to use real organic fruit, not flavourings. And the result has been worth all the effort. A real tangy, summer feeling drink that’s easy on the palate and balances the kombucha with the lightness and fruitiness of the mango and pineapple!