Soft Drinks Go Hard: 6 Boozy Kombuchas To Try

courtesy Boochcraft

The booch is loose!

This ongoing series looks at “hard” alcoholic versions of traditionally “soft” drinks, starting with kombucha.

If you’ve checked out the drinks cooler at your local supermarket, corner store or gas station lately, you’ve probably seen lots of bottles of kombucha, in all sorts of colors and flavors. The fizzy drink touts health benefits from its live, active cultures, and it’s expanded from being specific to specialty health-food stores into the mainstream market over the last decade or so.

Kombucha is made by fermenting sweetened tea with a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, or SCOBY. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie and looks like a floating mass of yellowish-brown goop, but a SCOBY is a completely non-terrifying combination of two familiar organisms: the same kind of yeast used to make nearly all beer, wine and spirits (and bread!), and the same kind of bacteria that turns wine or cider into vinegar. The two work as a team in kombucha-brewing, with the yeast eating sugar to produce alcohol, and then the bacteria eating alcohol to produce acetic acid. The result is a tart, lightly bubbly and lightly caffeinated beverage, to which producers add all manner of fruit juices, herbs and spices.

Traditional kombucha fermentation produces only a small amount of alcohol—in the US, “soft” kombucha must contain less than half a percent by volume to be sold without legal restrictions—so hard kombucha brewers typically add extra sugar and perform a second yeast-only fermentation to raise the ABV. Hard kombuchas mostly come in between 5 and 10 percent, similar to beer. The hard kombucha category represents a small but exploding market: US sales for 2019 were just over $12 million, according to industry body Kombucha Brewers International, but that’s more than double the figure for 2018, and up from less than $1 million just two years before that.

Here are a few hard kombuchas to keep an eye out for, along with my flavor recommendations.

Boochcraft

Founded by a trio of friends in San Diego, Calif., in early 2016, Boochcraft is among the oldest hard kombucha brands out there, and it’s now available in eight states. Its products are fully certified organic, and the brand does a lot of charitable work, from giving one percent of gross sales to environmental causes to helping run a cooking and nutrition education program with a local farm.

Favorite flavor: Grapefruit-Hibiscus-Heather. The tart fruitiness of the grapefruit and hibiscus goes well with kombucha’s natural acidity, while heather’s grassiness is a nice counterpart for kombucha’s natural earthy funk.

Least favorite flavor: Orange-Pomegranate-Beet. I like beet juice in cocktails, but here I find the vegetable’s flavor is a little too earthy in combination with the kombucha—it slides from  subtle-but-noticeable minerality into “muddy feet”.

courtesy Jiant

Flying Embers

Named for wildfires that nearly destroyed its Ojai, Calif., brewery when it first opened, Flying Embers is far and away the most widely available hard kombucha in the US, with cans on shelves in 33 states. The brand’s founder previously created KeVita, a non-alcoholic kombucha company bought by PepsiCo in 2016.

Favorite flavor: Pineapple Chili. Yes, they used the wrong spelling (it should be “chile,” like the peppers!), but the tropical flavor of pineapple goes really well with kombucha, and the peppery spice here is a faint and pleasant lingering burn on the tongue.

Least favorite flavor: Ginger & Oak. Oak and kombucha aren’t the best of friends. This has only a subtle tannic oak note, but it brings out some unpleasant funk in the final product.

Jiant

With a beachy vibe on its labels and light, floral flavors in its cans, Jiant reflects its Southern California home of Los Angeles. Launched just last summer, the brand is now available in California and Colorado.

Favorite flavor: The Original. It sounds like it should be unflavored, but The Original is actually made with passionfruit and elderflower. It has a light and refreshing flavor with a lovely floral note on the finish.

Least favorite flavor: Gingerly. This was a tough choice, as all three Jiant flavors are pretty tasty, but this ginger-lemongrass flavor is a little overwhelmed by the ginger.

courtesy JuneShine

JuneShine

Started by a pair of surfer buddies, also in San Diego, JuneShine takes a craft beer–esque approach to its kombucha, with two local taprooms in SoCal and booch available on draft at bars in 10 cities around the country. Its name is a reference to jun kombucha, a style that uses green tea and honey rather than black tea and sugar to create a milder-flavored finished product that many hard kombucha–makers use.

Favorite flavor: Blood Orange Mint. Blood orange lends a nice sweetness, and the mint offers a distinctive fresh-herb green flavor on the finish. It’s a surprisingly delicious combo.

Least favorite flavor: Acai Berry. It’s just a sort of indistinct fruity flavor. The label could have said blackberry, apple or grape and I wouldn’t have doubted it.

Kombrewcha

The only East Coast booch on this list, Kombrewcha was born in Brooklyn and can now be found at nearly every Whole Foods in New York State, as well as stores in 15 other states and the District of Columbia. At just 4.4 percent ABV, it’s the lowest-alcohol brew in the bunch, making it great as a “session” booch.

Favorite flavor: Royal Ginger. There’s a really nice balance of sweetness and subtle ginger spice. This would make an interesting base for a Mule cocktail!

courtesy KYLA

Least favorite flavor: Lemongrass Lime. The flavors here are just too subtle and get lost behind kombucha’s natural acidity.

KYLA

Oregon beer-maker Full Sail Brewing—whose Session Premium Lager recently won Gold in the 2020 NY International Beer Competition—has been around for more than 30 years, so they have all the equipment and expertise needed to ferment up a tasty kombucha. Plus the brewery’s national footprint means you can get its KYLA brand all over the US—in 18 states, to be specific.

Favorite flavor: Pink Grapefruit. There’s a great balance of sweet, citrus and a hint of bitterness in this brew, which reminds me a lot of the delicious Stiegl Radler.

Least favorite flavor: Ginger Tangerine. This doesn’t really have distinctive notes of either one.