Kombucha no more!

In Whole Foods yesterday, while looking for a bottle to tide me over as my next home-brewed batch nears readiness, I discovered that they are not stocking Kombucha right now. Hopefully it's just temporary, but what a bummer to those who regularly shell out four bucks on one measly bottle and don't know how to make it for themselves when emergency strikes!

It is only when the brew measures below 0.5% alcohol that it is allowed to be sold as a non-alcoholic beverage. But when you have a fermenting product full of residual sugars, it can be really hard to make it stop fermenting, even when its cold temperature is maintained. More alcohol is produced, changing the product along the way from its journey from warehouse to store shelf. Besides, that's what makes all the fizz anyways: post-bottling fermentation.

But I guess some people complained that the innocent-looking drink they bought actually contained enough alcohol to get them drunk if consumed on an empty stomach on their morning ride to work. Bummer. So now the companies will need to find a way to standardize their brews so they meet the guidelines of The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Who wants their drink full of live probiotics standardized by those guys? Yuck.

So I say, if there's ever been an extra incentive to learn to make your own fizzy brew, now is the time indeed! If you live nearby, in the Bay Area, you can join me on July 20th in my kitchen in North Oakland. For the rest of you, I'm not going to go into a whole schpiel here on how to make it here when there's already hundreds of posts. (Though I do have some secrets for making it extra good!) Good luck. I am always here as a resource to answer your brewing questions, whether you know me or not. I'm nice like that, and also a fermenting geek ;)