
“Sitting out at the grill with a nice, organic burger would be perfect to have a ginger kombucha with.” For Cornelius, a restaurant in Brooklyn, Childs has made a garlic-horseradish kombucha used as an oyster shooter, just one part of a program Childs hopes to grow. “Any time where you would have a beer, you can replace it with kombucha,” says Schwartz. Mixed with the effervescence, it’s a flavor combination so appealing, people even (6) pair it with food. That’s right, (5) kombucha tends to be kind of addictive. “For people used to drinking Coke, it’s scary.” Yet he found that after someone takes a couple more sips, they get hooked on its tart, refreshing taste. “Our biggest challenge is to get people to take a second sip,” says Mike Schwartz of Bad Ass Organics, a company specializing in fermented food and drink.

This brings us to the actual flavor of kombucha, which traditionally remains sour, a sensation first-timers have trouble swallowing. “Think of kombucha as a sour mix,” Childs says while listing off tasty cocktails you can make, including the kombucha-rita, kombucha sour, and the 50-50, his beer and kombucha version of a shandy.

The best way to do this is to (4) use kombucha as a mixer. “It has naturally detoxifying properties like gluconic acid that targets the liver.” Even better, he added, drink kombucha while you throw one back using a system Childs calls “reverse-toxmosis” and (3) never have a hangover again. “It’s the best damn hangover cure I have ever found,” says Childs. If you don’t want to eat it, don’t worry-kombucha principally gets made to drink, and what better time to down than after a heavy night of imbibing. “It has a texture like squid and a light, fruity and slightly sour flavor.” Childs warns that you don’t want to cook the SCOBY, lest the treasured live-probiotics get killed instead, cube it and toss it in a salad or with pasta. “One of my favorite things about kombucha is that after you harvest the liquid, you are left with a gelatinous disk that you can turn into food,” he says. For starters, according to Kombucha Brooklyn’s founder Eric Childs, (2) you can eat the SCOBY. Now that you know more about this drink, let’s dive into some facts most people aren’t aware of. The other states that kombucha originated in China eons ago, and was known as the “Tea of Immortality.” No matter where this drink really came from, it’s having a heyday today in the United States. The story of kombucha can be told from two sides: One goes back to Russia in the late 19 th century, where they drank a tea known as Cajnyj Kvas made from chaga, a Birch tree mushroom. Not that the original incarnation of this drink used such crazy ingredients. Ginger is the most popular variety, but other flavors include grape, strawberry, lemon, cranberry and Synergy’s Maqui Berry Mint, a mojito-inspired creation. Many companies like Synergy, the largest producer of commercial kombucha, make the taste more palatable by adding all sorts of flavors to the brew. Though the drink technically is a tea, (1) it tastes nothing like tea and instead has a distinct sourness similar to a Belgian lambic. It gets made using a giant culture that looks like a small Frisbee called a SCOBY, which stands for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.”
Synergy kombucha near me full#
But do you know what it actually is? No? Here you go: Kombucha is a fermented tea that is chock full of good-for-you yeasts and bacteria. Kombucha is a fizzy bottled drink you see at the health food store and have heard so much about.

