Beginners Guide How to Start a Kombucha Business || kombucha brewery tour 2021

hello good morning happy solstice i apologize for being a little bit late having some technical difficulties mercury goes direct tomorrow and apparently we're just having a few hiccups before we get there so today i'm really excited to be sharing with you some tips about commercial brewing um for those of you who don't know i am hannah crum the kombucha bama i started kombucha camp in 2004 as a workshop in my home i then started blogging online as kombucha camp.blogspot.com back in 07. and um launched my e-commerce store with my husband in 2010 and kombucha camp.com in 2010 we had the um what we call the great kucha withdrawal some mistakenly call it a recall that is not what happened um but it does relate to the trace amounts of alcohol present in kombucha which essentially were found to be higher than the legal limit and despite there being no complaints from consumers the grocery stores feared being liable for products not being in compliance so they asked all of the kombucha producers to buy back their kombucha which was incredibly um chaotic and was a bit of a crisis in our industry and out of that crisis like any crisis um solutions ideas and thoughts were created and that is where the plan for kombucha brewers international the little seed was planted at that time during this crisis because the thought process i had was well hey if we had already been organized as an industry would this situation have played out in this way now unfortunately this crisis created a lot of fear in our industry and it's taken many many years for us to even try to come back together and work together which of course has been one of my missions my life's work um you know when i started blogging in 07 i immediately reached out to kombucha brand started interviewing them i collected every brand on the side of my website because i was just really excited about anybody who was pursuing this from a commercial perspective i loved kombucha so much i know i wanted to share it with the world i loved meeting other people who had that same thought process and so um that is what sort of led to the first conversations about starting kbi kombucha brewers international which i co-founded with my husband alex ligouri in 2014 um prior to that prior to it actually launching because we started out with kombucha khan january 18 2014 in santa monica in 2011 and 2012 alex and i spearheaded some cross-platform marketing promotions on facebook called new year's revolution re-evolution capital e in order to just raise awareness of kombucha uh across the globe across the platform and we had different brands promoting each other and part of that in 2012 is the 30-day kombucha challenge which has just recently been revived this month um you know you can start at any time it's an email series but we we've been doing it together here cheers to all my 30-day kombucha challenge folks the idea behind that was simply swap your soda your energy drink just one of those sort of beverages that maybe don't actually support your health as well as you would like with kombucha for 30 days and just observe what kinds of changes you might notice when you start drinking it on a regular basis so i'm really excited to be doing that 30 day kombucha challenge again so check out the link in the profile if you want to learn more about that so this is my long rambling story about kbi in the commercial industry so um so we did those promotions then in 2013 i started traveling around the country telling people hey i'm going to start this trade association will you join and in 2014 in january 2014 we had 40 brands from around the globe uh join us in santa monica for our first annual kombucha con and that is what launched kbi kombucha brewers international where i serve as president and uh alex is chairman of the board you know we have grown and shrunk tremendously over the years obviously as sort of everything has ebbed and flowed but we've also made some really monumental important steps for the industry and i'm sharing all of this context with you before i dive into the questions just so that you have a little bit of an understanding of the tension between home brewed kombucha got my little hannah's homebrew right here my love potion blueberry lavender rose cheers and um commercial kombucha which of course i like everybody else started out drinking commercially brewed kombucha now my first kombucha and yours might be different but mine was a gt's ginger aid and when i had that first sip in 2002 it was like love at first sip i was somebody who was sad standard american diet eating basically crap food and not feeling so great so when i encountered the living nutrients and enzymes in kombucha it just really woke my body up and said hey here's something you could really benefit from enjoying and because i'd been the pickle juice lover like i would sneak the pickle juice out of the jar my mom would always yell at me and she caught me he's like oh that's too sour it's so bad for you it's too much salt maybe i was salt depleted because it's one of those vital nutrients that we are sometimes missing as much as there's too much salt and processed foods um i digress as usual but uh but that was to say i fell in love and like many folks my thirst out grew my budget which is why i started making it at home and what i love about kombucha as as that product is that it's also something that when you fall in love with this process when you fall in love with that culture when you're making your kombucha and now you're sharing it with friends you're sharing your co-workers and people like oh my gosh this is so delicious you should sell this right they encourage you to dive on in and make a business out of it not realizing all of the different intricacies that go along with launching a food business and especially with a business with a product that you know does create alcohol and even though the alcohol and kombucha is not intoxicating in fact it's a vital nutrient in my book but it's also a preservative so the alcohol kombucha is there to prevent mold this is why it's one of the safest beverages we can make at home fermented foods because it has all these natural defense mechanisms that alcohol also helps you to absorb the nutrients so there's some really vital properties there but we also have outdated laws here in the united states and in other parts of the world that say when you cross a threshold of half a percent alcohol by volume that means your product needs to be classified as an alcoholic beverage subject to taxes and has to be handled in a very different supply chain than the one we have for just getting food and vegetables and things to people and that becomes a challenge and a problem and that challenge and problem is what initiated the entire industry um you know this association to begin with um but we've done a lot of things so here's a couple other things and then i'm going to start answering your questions but some of the things we've done is last july we launched our code of practice so again if we had started that code of practice in 2014 or maybe even 2010 it would be tea sugar scoby that would be it there'd be no other sort of variations per se but because of this whole alcohol issue brands took different approaches so some brands invested in de-alkalization equipment which is really costly but of course it removes the alcohol and allows you to then have a non-alcoholic product without changing your fermentation process so you ferment the kombucha as you normally would use this spinning comb column that's used in the wine industry it takes all the alcohol out perfect now you have a compliant product other people chose to pasteurize or to use kombucha from concentrate when you ferment kombucha so that all of the sugar is fermented out of it you have a zero sugar product of course it's really sour at that point we need to dilute it we need to flavor it um a lot of people will a lot of brands will also add probiotics and things like that to it um and so so those are just some of the the way people try to deal with it now others have tried to approach it from the fermentation process standpoint so we've seen innovations in equipment such as the symbiosis fermenter what we've learned over time is that what we really want is wide shallow right think about it when you're taking a counter culture you know something you do in a one gallon jar on your counter for seven days and try to mass produce that on a huge scale naturally you're going to run into issues of consistency and things like that and so that is where there's so many different approaches available but alcohol does remain one of those questions that we have to deal with and so if you're here in the united states whether you're a consumer a producer whatever i highly suggest you go to i want to say there's a link in our profile and sign the petition sign the petition that supports the kombucha so this is the other thing we've been doing in addition to launching a code of practice helping people understand the different types of kombucha advocating for transparent labeling so that consumers can instantly see what type of kombucha they're purchasing is it pasteurized is it from concentrate is it a raw traditional so i know it has a shorter shelf life i need to consume it more rapidly we've also been working on the kombucha act so this act specifically raises the taxation threshold on kombucha from half a percent abv to 1.25

percent so this number harmonizes with canada which is 1.1 mexico is 2 a lot of europe is 1.2 australia also has 1.1 so there's a lot of places

across the globe where there are these more common sense type thought processes around these trace amounts of alcohol and so highly please please please go uh hit that petition button we really need your senators your representatives to hear that you want them to support this act um because this will create this buffer for our kombucha producers and for those of you tuning in who want to be producers yourself this is incredibly crucial because it allows you to continue to make it traditionally brewed kombucha of course you're still going to have to some tweaks to your process in order to ensure that it's compliant but it also ensures that like a piece of fruit when your product leaves the facility should it be temperature abuse should you know it gets stuck on a dock for some time once it's out of your hands it's out of your control and so should it be temperature abuse that alcohol level rises slightly now you're not going to be penalized you're not going to be forced into paying taxes on your product you're not going to force your consumers to go to the beer aisle to find their health beverage so it just is a lot of common sense all right that was my soapbox thank you so much for the history of listening to the history lesson and uh hearing about the petition now i'm going to dive into some questions of course if you have any questions at all drop them in the little question here and i will answer them as best as i can so as i mentioned i had a few technical issues this morning so my normally i have it right here but i gotta look a little farther okay so justin marine said here we're gonna get a little closer justin marie my question has to do with making my final bottles bottled product clear and smooth i make kombucha a gallon at a time i f1 for eight to ten days then mix with puree and let steep for a day should i do this in the fridge then strain with an ordinary fine mesh strainer then bottle i always have mini scobys in my bottles it puts off people here i prefer clear brew a little sediment is fine so should i use whole fruit to steep how long is there a type of strainer that takes out more fine particles is there a better way to impart fresh fruit flavor without clouding up my brew creating scrubbing and products so right again this is that tension between the home brewer who knows that their living product is going to manifest a scoby because that's a sign of health and vitality versus the consumer who's used to having beverages that don't have um extra things floating in them unless it's like chia seeds or boba and you have specifically purchased it for that texture element so um yes you can f1 and uh you can f2 in the fridge so that is a way that some commercial producers will do it they'll do their f1 they'll do their from their primary fermentation that's f1 and then they will infuse with their juice and put it right into the fridge there's no straining so when you're using a puree because you have larger chunks that is going to necessitate likely going through a straining process there are many different micron filters available to you out there this is the part where i break down a little because the numbers always sort of confuse me but i want to say 50 micron filters probably good for that and uh but yeah i think that that'll be that'll be good as long as you're not less than a 0.45 micron which would be considered sterile filtration which takes like everything out remember the yeast are larger than the bacteria and so more often than not when we're using a micron filter it's intended to remove those large particles of yeast why because the yeast is what creates the alcohol by converting the sugar if you infuse fruit into your primary fermentation in 2f you're potentially allowing that alcohol an opportunity to continue to elevate because you've reintroduced pardon me my kombucha burps um you've reintroduced a fermentable sugar into the bottle and if you don't remove the oxygen from the bottle you will end up with a little scoby see i've got one growing right here i don't know if you can see it i could see it yeah there you go um and why that happens is because so for example this bottle was filled up to here well there's still air in here and these are tight but they're not airtight and so often times we use things like force carbonation where we put co2 into the liquid that creates your consistent bubble but also removes the oxygen because the oxygen is what is allowing the fermentation to continue to happen now that will also change the flavor profile in the bottle in addition to getting you a little scoby now back in the day uh when you bought a gt's gingerhead you've got a scoby sometimes in your mouth remember the first time that happened i'd pull i did spit take just because i wasn't quite ready for it you know your your body instinctually is like whoa that's not supposed to be there now of course i'll let them get into my glass and i toss them back like an oyster shooter so there's a couple of things here you can um try these techniques to shift and minimize that but then you also probably want to educate your consumer and let them know hey there's living strands of culture in here and that is not a bad thing if you don't wish to consume it of course you can strain it out but if you want that little extra you know hit of bacteria microorganisms go ahead and toss it right back so the couple of things i pointed out here was to use a micron filter in order to a 50 micron filter in order to filter out the large particles so that your products a little bit clearer um you know i don't do puree and that's why this is so very clear because i'm just infusing whole frozen blueberries in here now that might not be the most cost effective way but i'm not doing it commercially that's what i do for myself but that gives it this beautiful clear color another option would be to do juice instead of puree because then you won't have that extra particulate you likely won't even need to do it for a filtration step and then you'll have a clearer product again the forced carbonation or anything you can do to minimize the amount of oxygen in the bottle is going to help with the reduction of growing scobies in there as well so those are just some of the steps we can do to manage that issue okay let's see if i can see this far tanks that allow the ferment for kombucha yeah so because we're a young industry and we're still growing um there hasn't been a lot of equipment specifically designed for kombucha as i mentioned earlier there's a tank called symbiosis fermenter it's made by stout tanks they did it in collaboration with baraboocha um and it's like dresser drawers in a way it's kind of like these long shallow trays and as i said before there's more surface area here's what it does so the more surface area you have and the less depth the more of the bacteria get access to oxygen or air because air is more than just oxygen and that allows for the fermentation process to occur so let's go back to some basics here sugar right we have sugar in our primary fermentation and yes i did see filtration question there so i've got you said by honey so sugar the yeast excrete the inverted that cuts it into the fructose and glucose those smaller molecules are utilized by the organisms and um are utilized by the organisms and then that creates ethanol so the the yeast also create ethanol as part of this process and again the really brilliant part of creating the ethanol is it out-competes other organisms it prevents mold and other things from colonizing that delicious sweet tea and it also has a nutritional benefit to the consumer in that it thins the blood makes it easier for us to absorb those nutrients now of course as we've already mentioned we want to manage the amount of alcohol present in our kombucha because our current compliance laws here in the united states stipulated half a percent and that's true in a lot of places and so when we have this more surface area more of that alcohol is able to be converted more rapidly right if we go skinny and narrow there's not a lot of surface area and it's more difficult for that air to penetrate all the way to the bottom of the ferment and so if we do wide and flat which i know you can't see my hands because wide and flat that again allows for more of that exchange to naturally occur so without making a lot of tweaks in your process just simply changing the shape of your equipment you can have a different process now here's the problem right the reason we love tall and skinny in the beer industry or whatever is because you can squeeze a lot of tanks into a smaller square footage right you can go really tall with your ceilings and put massive tanks in there now if we do massive tanks and we have to do some form of oxygenation which is again normal in the beer or wine industry i don't know if they do that in wine so don't take my word for that but definitely in the beer industry adding oxygen or pumping air through a system is normal same in making vinegar so when you make vinegar commercially it's often like rotated through different machines and air is added to it and that just hastens that vinegaration process which is we're essentially tea vinegar it's just um we're harvesting it before it's too sour so that we can enjoy this so equipment is one of those ways that you're going to want to use now stainless steel is a really common material but we've also seen people using food grade plastic so i know there's sort of a negative thought process about plastic and you know i i understand that of course but sometimes we have to balance budget and practicality with um available tools and so oftentimes a smaller brand will start with a food grade plastic but then they'll often evolve into stainless steel which is just a more expensive material to purchase and work with but both of those materials are going to be great some people do oat barrels that's its own kind of special process of course we've seen i don't know if you've seen but unhealthy they sometimes show they do everything in like two and a half gallon beehive jars which is really intense that's a lot of labor that's a lot of um things you know gts uh does a small batch similar to that so you know you want to talk about uh taking your home brew to a massive scale that that's those are two brands that are doing it um a lot of other folks so they're using uh various equipment fixes and other things in order to make that more compliant so those are the types of tasks and then i see um uh that was from kombucha and my eyesight's not this great okay avani um let me go look at the next question so about the the filter yes so some people filter from f1 just depending on if their f2 is going straight into the bottle so for example if you're doing juice you might not need to strain it again after you've done after you've infused the juice and so you would filter at your f1 stage and then infuse with the juice right into the fridge or bottle however you're doing that for other folks you might infuse with fruit and pieces of things that need to be strained out at which point you'd straight at that point because here's the thing every time we strain out the yeast we're removing the potential for natural effervescence removing some of the flavor elements and then we're also um uh yeah some of the flavor components as well uh the effervescence and of course then the ability to make alcohol that's the third one all right so that tanks was from kombucha axum i just answered the question that i saw popped up here let me click this little question button see what else we have here oh why don't scobies grow in commercial booch but it does in bottled at home boots well okay so again this depends on the brand so if your product is from concentrate you might not ever get a scoby to grow and i really think this is a great way for anybody consumer produce or whatever to sort of test the products they're purchasing you know try to grow scoby does it grow scoby or is it something that just never grows a scoby it'll also help you understand if there's filtration happening because again when we filter out the yeast some of the bacteria also get filtered out and that means it can be less able to reproduce right and so there have been some folks who've advocated like well you can't call it kombucha unless it creates a scopy now um as the president and my job is to encourage you know anybody buying commercial kombucha we recognize that we want everybody to be drinking kombucha and not everybody who can benefit from kombucha will necessarily be the type of person who loves finding a scoby in their bottle and so it's really important just like juice right we know there's fresh squeezed juice and we buy that at certain times and that has a certain um recognition to it we understand what we're buying we know it's going to be fresh and healthy and all the nutrients are going to be instantly utilizable we can uptake that nutrition and then there are going to be times when we buy juice from concentrate because that's just easier and we know it's going to have a longer shelf life and it's got to last for the whole week or whatever that is and then sometimes we buy pasteurized juice because now it's not from concentrate but it's pasteurized again we're getting that longer shelf life and so you know as much as there are purists out there and i have been in that purity camp for sure um i also recognize that it's more important that people are drinking kombucha versus all these other uh processed products and so it's important that we acknowledge and respect the diversity of our culture of our industry now of course what i help teach people about mostly is brewing traditionally for many kombucha which is similar to homebrew but at a commercial scale so let's see that was the question from here tips to get necessary licensing when still home brewing no money for commercial space california sorry not possible and here's why unfortunately when cottage food laws were being um implemented or people were being interviewed about them they reached out to some commercial producers who said oh no there's no way you can make this commercially at home and be safe which is awful because it's not true but unfortunately that is what has stuck and so you will need to get a commercial space what you can do in the meantime is of course make your test batches dial in your recipes flavor experiments connect with other people but you are going to need to be in a commercial space in order to operate a kombucha brewery commercially in the united states now in europe i've heard of plenty of people who are able to set up a kitchen in their home and they're able to make it out of their home and sell at the farmers market that just isn't the case here in the united states uh because when those um cottage food laws were being made it just wasn't going to be permissible now here's the other thing about the cottage food laws is they have really tight restrictions on how much money you can make from the products you're making at home and so um you know that's another limiting factor there how to maintain carbonation from 2f to bottling right so the reason that's challenging is because co2 is a gas right we've all at some point in our lives probably had a soda a bottle of soda you leave the cap off you come back 24 hours blah it's just like gooey syrup with no fizz it's disgusting and that's because co2 is a gas and it dissipates so you need to have a cap that is going to help hold in the carbonation and this is also why ultimately a lot of commercial brands will use a combination of natural effervescence and forced carbonation so forced carbonation is a bit of a standard in our industry because the consumer has that expectation that there's going to be a certain amount of bubble present and so you guarantee that with the forced carbonation but it doesn't have to be forced to the point where that's the only fizz you can also allow for some natural effervescence to be there and you can see it when you pour it you're not going to see it in mine because my i don't have a lot of fizz in my kabuto today but when you pour naturally effervescent kombucha the bubbles are many different sizes they pop at different rates and they feel softer on the tongue when you have forced carbonation the bubbles are uniform they pop at the same rate and they also have a pick a peak sensation on your tongue so you can start to train yourself to see the differences in those carbonation by observing your home brew versus something you're buying at the store so how to maintain it force carbonation tight lids good seal those are the ways to do it uh any tips for small batch bottling efficiencies currently using a later on the funnel okay so usually the first next step for bottling after hand pouring is a keg and so when you put your product and you put five gallons in a k corny keg same pk the differences between those two are their couplers and so you'll just want to research which keg is going to be right for you at kombucha brewers.org any kbi member has access to our draft quality standards manual that's just a free benefit of being a member we have low monthly memberships 38 a month is what we're starting at that gets you access to a massive resource library of tons of recorded content plus every month we do um a round table with a specific theme but then of course you can ask any question you like we also have a hasset plan template which is really crucial for those of you just getting started out here at kombucha camp we also custom make acid plans um but that'll cost you 750 versus 38 a month over a kbi so pick whichever is easier for you i'm happy to make your hasset plan and i make it super easy for us to do it and then i train you on all the points of it um with my services but of course if you are more diy and you need to save some money then you might consider just joining kbi but a keg so you put your kombucha in the keg you use a gun to put it into your bottles that is the next step from there go to youtube and google like home you know diy bottling systems and you'll see there you can buy certain types of equipment attach them to something and then you'll have like nozzles that you can do it now it's not going to be automated um there is going to be a point in your commercial life when it's going to make more sense to make the investment in a canning line in a bottling line because where it took an entire eight hour shift for one person to do x y or z bottles now it's going to take a couple hours and what that does is it gives you back efficiency from those employees and makes their lives a little bit better because now they're not stuck bottling all day long but again that you're growing in stages and so you have to pick where you're at and what makes the most sense for you but most brands are not starting out with a bottling line as the first purchase simply because they're very expensive and you need to figure out a lot of other pieces moving pieces before you jump right into that all right what does it mean numbers on refractometer yeah refractometers are challenging because while they're accurate for higher alcohol content beverages in terms of determining an alcohol content because our product has more trace amounts of alcohol it's not as accurate and so it can be used as sort of a really rough in-house guide to understanding your sugars and your alcohol but here's the problem so the refractometer is designed to um so here's what happens called refraction because light is shown through the liquid light goes through here there's an angle at which it refracts based on the amount of sugar present in that solution so right sugar is sort of like crystals and when the light hits it it refracts at a specific angle and that indicates how much sugar is present now with kombucha our sugar isn't just sucrose it's fructose it's glucose it's already been broken down in these smaller components and so again it's a gross tool in that it can get a it can measure a larger subset but it can't measure that finer subset and so ultimately what most brands will end up using is like a rita cube from our bio farm this is a multi-tasker unit that not only measures ethanol it can also measure sugars and methods it measures acidity so those are sort of the three those are the three metrics we want to dial in on yes ph can be helpful and it's really a food safety but without knowing your titratable acidity or how much acetic acid is present it's going to be really difficult to nuance your profiles and so measuring all three of those is going to really help so you can check out kombucha brewers.org we have approved ethanol methodologies and that's going to talk about refractometers and some of the other tools out there plus the most recent issue of symbiosis magazine symbiosismag.com that is the journal of kombucha brewers international where i am of course editing every piece but we have a really great um article in there looking at all the different types of equipment used for testing different things in kombucha from a commercial perspective another question do you clean up the vessels after every batch well so when we're home brewers and we know we're the ones consuming it we can be a little more relaxed when it comes to a commercial situation you're going to need to have cleaning protocols in place so as long as you have a schedule that makes sense um and and that can vary from brand to brand person to person like are you emptying the tank every time then yes you should clean it if you're only taking it to a partial level and then filling it back up you probably want to clean that out once every couple weeks once a month so again each person's process is going to vary and that's what we do at kombucha camp so when i'm working with you as a commercial consultant i'm not just giving you a cookie cutter here's the way to do it that's not my process my process is i'm going to hear what you're doing i want to hear the style of kombucha you're trying to make now let me give you some tips on how you can continue to make that great kombucha you're making but do it in a way that harmonizes with what you need to do at a commercial level so i'm really not into cookie cutter there are people out there who'll teach you a cookie cutter method but i'm really about supporting you and making your unique product with some great best practices how to stop fermentation for exporting okay well you've got to pasteurize it you've got a sterile filter it you've got a right like how do we stop fermentation is we have to kill the microbes in some way so if it's pasteurization we're using heat if it's preservatives that's chemical uh sterilization or chemical pasteurization if we're using sterile filtration which is what i mentioned before less than 0.45 micron

filter essentially it's so tiny a hole that everything that gets pushed through it it just removes everything like there's nothing left and so that makes it a shelf stable product and so for example jar kombucha out of england does that process um there are several others who may not have put it on their label that are doing that process and again so anytime you're coming across a kombucha that claims to be shelf stable you have to wonder is it from concentrate is it pasteurized so like kavita for example is both from concentrate and pasteurized it doesn't always say it on the on the bottle but that's exactly what the code of practice is intended to do is to make that communication clear to the consumer by putting transparency there um how to stop carbonation after bottling so again it's using some form of control now if you're doing a raw traditional kombucha then you are probably going to want to use refrigeration so refrigeration cold supply chain is the way we try to like think of again go back to fruit think about this as a living piece of fruit how do we keep fruit okay now these days we spray a bunch of weird chemicals on them so they can't continue to um you know rot in the store and that's not good either so think about buying fruit from your farmer's market right they're not putting any weird chemicals on it to the natural process of the fruit continuing to mature um but you keep it in cold storage and so that's the same thing we do with our raw living traditionally for many kombuchas we keep it in cold storage and cold supply chain becomes really important the challenge is there's not a robust cold supply chain um in a lot of places so for example in europe it's really challenging because you have you know buildings built hundreds of years ago before refrigeration was even a thing and now you're asking these places which are traditionally have really small spaces to also store your product cold before they sell it so they have to store it cold sell it cold and that can become challenging in different places in the us we have a little more flexibility it's a little bit bigger we were built later um there is more cold supply chain but again it can be challenging in terms of finding those right places to do that so all right um let's see i'm just going to check the time real quick here is there any more questions so let me just share a little bit about the commercial services perfect the commercial services we have available here at kombucha camp so when you work with the kombucha mama you are working with me the way our consultation works is like this so it's 350 for an hour which is actually 75 minutes because we include a 15 minute follow-up now those 75 minutes are yours to slice and dice any way you like after you sign up for the consultation and the product is in our store so you can find the store link in the profile or just email customer service kombucha camp.com i'm always happy to help then what happens is okay sorry i get distracted when i see the questions i see the question maddie i will answer it but um so after so then there's sent an intake form the intake form just allows you to focus and put all of the issues that are most pressing to you right in one place so before we even get on the call i'm already aware of what your most pressing issues are the first call usually is 30 minutes 45 minutes it can even be an hour it's really up to you and how much information you want to glean from that first call because i'm going to like download a ton of information after that first call you then receive access to our consultation resources guide so it sounds a lot fancier than it is it's a google doc with a bunch of information supplier links tips and techniques specific to the commercial brewing industry but it has a lot of great detailed information and it's organized with bookmarks and whatnot so it's easy for you to find exactly what you're looking for so some of the techniques we'll refer to in the consultation and then you'll find step-by-step instructions on how to execute those in the resources guide at that point any time that's left remaining is yours to use whenever you feel like so as long as i'm alive and still doing this i've had people two years later come back and use their last 10 minutes 15 minutes so again we're gonna honor your time uh you paid for it i'm happy to give you the knowledge whenever you're ready for it but what this does is it allows me to understand your process hear your pain points give suggestions now you can go and work with it try to solve some of those issues other pain points arise other issues you've got feedback you come back we talk about it again and that way we can get get you tweaking your process and and sometimes it's just valuable to have someone with expertise to confirm am i on the right track am i doing this right um you know again because of that crisis in our industry we still are a relatively closed industry unlike our beer buddies who are all open you know i really love that greg cook who at the time was the ceo of stone brewing was our very first keynote speaker in 2014 and his advice i repeat it all the time is get over yourselves in 20 years everybody's going to know anything anyway so what is that uh 2034. hopefully it doesn't take that long for us to get there but the idea is start sharing now because when it comes to craft beverages we're not competing we're competing on flavor profiles now of course this also means we need to keep growing consumer interest and so the more people are drinking kombucha the more shelf space there is for kombucha the more players can be involved in the kombucha industry and so you know it just takes more education more time to help people understand why they need to be investing in their health and how kombucha can help them do that on a daily basis so other services we have we also offer dna sequencing with our lab partner so knowing your culture is key to understanding your parameters right our dominant yeast here at kombucha camp and yes we do sell our cultures and starter liquid at wholesale to help you scale up we also offer a letter of guarantee even if you just buy one scoby from us a lot of commer a lot of inspectors will need a commercially purchased scoby and while we're not currently organic certified we've only ever used organic ingredients and many people have used our letter with their organic certification and and purchasing our scoby and liquid at wholesale um so scolio wholesale and then the dna sequencing so our dominant yeast is protanomyces bergson's which is which has very specific um yes we do ship to the uk mucha but they if they have specific temperature requirements and so once you know what your yeast needs that's how you create a sustainable environment for your product and this is well known in the beer industry where different types of yeast require different temperatures and so again we're a young industry we're just learning this we don't have the benefit of hundreds of years and billions of dollars of research but that's all starting to come and so you can also find information at the research.com gurus.org that's a research database that alex and i built and now it's housed on kombucha brewer so you can find a lot of research on different types of use so we do dna sequencing we offer culture and liquid at wholesale we also have our tea blends at wholesale so some brands love our tea blend and they use it makes the best taste in kombucha we have to admit we like to brag about that um and then yeah custom so custom solutions i've worked with folks helping them figure out distribution i've worked with folks helping to cost out their their inventory and what you know what price should they be charging for their product and so there's lots of different ways so even if there's something different or unusual please bring it to me i love solving puzzles and working with you to figure it out i'm going to answer one last question i'm going to have to go but obviously i'm excited to have you all here and love helping and supporting people so maddie i said i'd answer your question maddie bff since raw kombucha doesn't really go off who how can you decide the length of shelf life so this has to do with alcohol compliance you are correct we really should like wine just have a born on date for our product because it never does go bad now it might not taste good but i've had many bottles where a year later pull it out of the fridge fantastic in fact even better than you might imagine after a couple weeks or even a few months but that said it's all about compliance and so we do our shelf life testing by holding retention samples so you'll make your batch you'll make extra so that you have retention samples you stick them in a fridge and then every month every two months every three months you'll pull a bottle out and you'll test it again and so at the point at which it starts to creep above that half a percent or 1.1 or whatever your compliance number

is that's how we determine shelf life or if you notice the flavor starts to go off after a certain point so holding retention samples and you can do a lot of this stuff in-house as opposed to having it done at a lab can really help you with that so thank you everybody sorry i wasn't able to get to every single question so glad to have you here i hope you'll reach out and ask for more info about our consultation services and how we can support you as a home brewer going into a commercial business and uh really appreciate seeing you again thank you don't forget to trust your gut

2021-07-02 16:35

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