In a dark, barely used office of The Denver Post, a jar filled with liquid sat on a desk. Floating inside was a whitish glob, with dark, hair-like ropes hanging down from it, and strands of an almost opaque matter, like a jellyfish, drifting underneath.
Curious reporters did second takes as they walked past the office door.
“What is it?”
“Itap alive,” I’d tell them.
“Whatap if for? A science experiment?”
“I’m brewing kombucha.”
They weren’t always won over by my confidence that this was completely normal.
“I’ll let you try it when itap done.”
What is kombucha?
Kombucha is a fermented tea. It’s made by introducing a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) into brewed black or green tea and sugar. The mix is left to ferment for a week to a month. The result is a fizzy drink that can vary from sweet to vinegary, depending on how long it ferments. Fruit, herbs and spices can be added for a second fermentation to add additional flavor.
The popularity of kombucha in Denver is growing. Denver’s not only has its own taproom, but its product is also is showing up on tap in local breweries around town. And in the Highland neighborhood serves up flights of the drink brewed all over the state.
I like the slight tangy flavor and fizziness of kombucha. I also appreciate having a drink with a lower alcohol content on those all-day brewery crawls through Denver. (Most kombuchas have between .5 percent and 3 percent alcohol content.)
Is it healthy?
While there is little science to back it up, folks who drink kombucha regularly swear to its health benefits.
Haley Bettin, who works at Happy Leaf Kombucha, describes it as “the cure-all that doesn’t really cure anything. It just sets your body to heal itself.” Which, in turn, might help with everything from acne to joint pain.
That may be because kombucha is rich in probiotics, which helps with your overall gut health.
“It just makes me feel better,” said Danielle Brooks, owner of American Culture Kombucha Taproom. She used to have terrible heartburn and said she was taking so much medication that it was destroying her esophagus. Brooks said she started drinking kombucha, and the heartburn went away.
Brooks also says Kombucha is full of Vitamin B, which helps with energy and clarity.
“I’m a huge fan of drinking it at 2 o’clock to get me through the 2 to 5 part of the day. (But) itap not like coffee, where you drink it and are buzzed and then crash.”
Her answer to the critics who criticize kombucha, and say itap all hype?
“Haters gonna hate.”
My opinion: It tastes good, so to me any health benefits are secondary.
Safe home brewing
My jar sat in the office for nine days. Not everyone was standoffish; a few had already discovered the drink in taprooms and on supermarket shelves and were excited to see how it was made.
I moved my fermenting kombucha to the conference room for a second fermentation. I strained out the SCOBY, and the dark yeast strains, added blackberries and ginger, and let it sit for another three days.
This is the more attractive stage of the fermentation, when the mixture is bubbly and slightly pink from the berries. More coworkers were signing up to try it.
But there was a little voice in my head that expressed concern: I’d read horror stories on the internet about kombucha that had gone bad.
The dangers
There is a risk when brewing kombucha, explained Ethan Tsai, assistant professor of chemistry at Metropolitan State University of Denver. When you’re trying to get a microorganism — yeast or bacteria — to do the work for you, you provide an attractive environment for all sorts of microbial life, and can risk secondary infections, he said.
Tsai’s advice to avoid infections in home-brewed kombucha is to start with sterilized jars and lids. “The law of the land as a brewer is cleanliness is godliness,” Tsai said.
That means more than just washing everything with warm soap and water. Tasi recommends caustic sterilizing agents that you can find at most stores that sell home-brewing equipment. You can also buy kits to test what bacteria are in the tea to make sure they’re not harmful.
That’s not something you need to worry about when buying kombucha in stores. And Brooks says all of her providers pass health code regulations. “You can’t just brew it in your house and bring it here,” she said.
Bettin, who has been home-brewing kombucha for years, assured me that itap pretty obvious when a batch goes bad. It doesn’t look right or taste good.
But fermentation itself is not bad, Tsai said. “We have harnessed (it) to do a lot of work for us.”
Beer is also a product of fermentation.
“Fermentation is just when some kind of microbe … yeast or specific bacteria is used to metabolize (or) to consume sugar and have it produce some kind of acid, alcohol or gas,” Tsai said. It happens in wine, when the sugar in grape juice is fermented into the alcohol, in bread when yeast produces Co2, a gas that makes the bread rise, and in yogurt, when bacteria creates lactic acid.
Brooks recommends first-time kombucha home-brewers take a class, such as the ones offer through Happy Leaf Kombucha. (Check its website in January.)
Just try it
It was time to try my kombucha. I poured it into a glass, and it bubbled up to the edge.
It was sweeter than I expected, but still had that vinegar tang I have come to know in kombucha. I could still taste the black tea with just the slight amount of fruit. Perhaps it could have used a few more days to ferment.
I poured some for my coworkers.
The two most common responses: “Will this make me sick?” followed by, “Actually, this tastes good.”
A few even came back for seconds.
