Kombuchat

It’s remarkable just how quickly kombucha and other fermented beverages have stormed the marketplace in recent years.

The beverage’s ever-growing popularity has coincided with stores carrying a larger number of refrigerated drinks as well as new bottling techniques which can preserve the fermentation of kombucha for transport.

Everyone knows about GT’s famous kombucha and how that has dominated stores like Whole Foods the past few years.

Other up-and-coming alternatives promise unique flavors and tastes.

For example, LIVE Soda has created a new line of flavored kombuchas that fuse the refreshing taste of soda with all that kombucha-y goodness:

Pure Doctor- Sweet with a touch of spice. It has delicious notes of sweet cherry, spicy clove, smooth caramel and deep molasses for lip-smacking flavor.

Culture Cola- We take the classic flavor known the world over and bring it to you with authenticity that can’t be denied.

Revive Rootbeer- It’s creamy, bold and refreshingly smooth. The undertones of vanilla and bright sizzle of sassafras will take you back to a simpler time.

Living Limon- It’s bright and fruity for a perfectly balanced zest. Pleasantly sparkling, this citrusy beverage is perfect for any day.

These are sodas made how sodas used to be made: small batch, natural flavors, with the added benefit of kombucha, which creates a beverage that’s far healthier than your average soda.

So instead of reaching for a Coke, check out LIVE Soda’s award-winning kombucha flavors at a store near you.

The kombucha kraze is sweeping the nation. No longer just the elixir of the Hollywood elite, kombucha can now be found in Dallas, including at a 24-hour restaurant:

Buzzbrews
All locations of the 24-hour eatery have Holy Kombucha available by the glass or growler. Current flavors on tap include cinnamon-apple spice, hibiscus berry and pineapple passion.

Other restaurants, such as Company Café, Green Spot, Bikram Yoga, Brewed, and Garden Café actually have kombucha on tap—just like beer.

That gives Texans a whole new meaning to “reaching for a cold one”.

it’s on tap!

Dr. Andrew Weil is well-known for his efforts to bring integrative medicine to the mainstream, which combines the best of new Western technologies with traditional Eastern medicine.

Recently, Dr. Weil was asked about kombucha, which is rapidly gaining popularity in the West and is well-known in Russia and the Far East as a popular health beverage.

Dr. Weil warns of aspergillus, a toxic fungus that can be produced by home-brewing kombucha improperly, and that it can have deadly results for the elderly, children, or pregnant or nursing mothers.

But the real second-half of the one-two punch came with Dr. Weil’s final statement: “I know of no health benefits to be gained by drinking kombucha tea”.

What do you think? Is Dr. Weil giving kombucha a fair rap?

One of the unusual things about kombucha is the fact that it’s fermented. Outside of sauerkraut or pickles, it’s hard to imagine many foods in a modern diet that are fermented.

We haven’t needed to ferment foods since the advent of refrigeration, which has changed diets and changed tastes. However, it’s a part of our food history that’s little-recognized:

every long-lived culture in the world consumed fermented vegetables, dairy and meat. Fermentation reaches back six thousand years into Chinese culture, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia buried sweet potatoes, and ancient Roman manuscripts describe lacto-fermented sauerkraut.

But does it still have a place in the modern world? Are there any health benefits from fermentation?

According to Jordan Rubin, author of The Maker’s Diet, “[f]ermentation is especially effective in releasing important nutritional compounds through “pre-digestion” that would otherwise pass through the human digestive system, undigested and unused.” It seems that, by expunging fermented foods from our diet, we’re not getting the most out of our foods as we should.

Luckily, however, we have kombucha, probably the easiest to consume modern fermented product—and one you can make yourself.

Kombucha has officially reached the Rockies.

Jenny Lyons and Mike Burns started making kombucha when Jenny received a lymphatic cancer diagnosis, and she credits the tea for her healing.

Then, “[a]fter years of home brewing the tea, the couple decided to take their hobby to the next level and began selling it at farmer’s markets across the Front Range. Often made with fresh, local fruits and unusual flavors, the kombucha was instantly popular during the hot summer months.”

They have since opened up Denver’s first café to feature fresh kombucha, called “Happy Leaf”.

Lyons and Burns plan to offer five teas at any time, though high demand already has some selling out early. Their “regulars” are Pura Vida (coconut, ginger, lime) and Longevity (lemon, hibiscus, ginger), but look for a variety of unique, seasonal offerings to be on tap as well. Thus far, flavors like strawberry-basil and even a Simcoe dry-hopped version have been available.

Those flavors sound downright scrumptious.

Move over Coors—there’s a new Rocky Mountain brewed beverage in town.

“Probiotics” is a term you hear all over the place these days. Yogurts, juices, smoothies, vitamins—everyone’s on the probiotics train.

But what do they actually do?

Kombucha is a probiotic, which means it’s filled with millions of tiny bacteria and organisms that are designed to replenish and rebalance natural good bacteria in your body. Obviously, antibiotics kill bacteria, and with the continual reliance on antibiotics, nutritionists fear that we’re killing the good bacteria as well.

University of Connecticut dermatologist Meagan McCusker is a fan of probiotics, using them to alleviate “a wide variety of conditions including acne and psoriasis”.

McCusker says, “Probiotics can impact just about everything in the body. They really can’t and shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to overall health maintenance.”

Kombucha is one of the most widely-used sources of probiotics—which goes to show how important kombucha can be to a healthy diet.

While households across America are discovering kombucha, some individuals are less than convinced.

In an article documenting how Tennessee homes and grocery stores are starting to brew kombucha, a dietician is quoted saying the following:

“I think it’s just another health trend, like juicing or the Paleo diet,” says Amy Autuori, a registered dietitian at Memorial Hospital. “And I’ve heard it tastes horrible. Why don’t people just eat a yogurt and drink some black tea?”

What kind of dietician would dismiss something so easily out of hand without actually trying it?

This shows an ignorance of the types of bacteria too, because the bacteria found in yogurts is different than the bacteria found in kombucha.

Black tea and yogurt are great additions to a diet, don’t get me wrong, but would this dietician be prescribing yogurt for someone who is lactose intolerant?

Unfortunately, many “dieticians” like this don’t do their research or stay on the up and up products like kombucha. And it’s their patients who suffer.

There have been spotty reports that kombucha consumption can indeed be dangerous.

There is little evidence to back this up, but according to Dr. Michele Berman:

[t]he greatest danger from kombucha seems to arise in “home brew” versions that have become contaminated because of improper preparation and/or when kombucha interacts with alcohol or prescription drugs.

People should be careful when consuming kombucha, especially if it’s made at home. And if you take prescriptions, it’s good to check with your doctor to ensure that there won’t be any adverse reactions (it sounds like some may be due to the small amount of alcohol content interfering with certain meds).

By and large, however, kombucha is extremely safe to drink and the entire beverage should not be tarred just because of a few instances of misuse.