After a meteoric rise in popularity in the US as a health drink, Kombucha has been pulled from the shelves of many major retailers over concerns that the drink often contains significant amounts of alcohol due to bottle-fermentation. On the bright side, it isn't too hard to find a mother and brew your own. But fermentation fetishists everywhere are left to wonder: Is Kefir next? More generally, do the trade-offs necessary to conform to commercial food regulations destroy the benefits of fermentation?
posted by kaibutsu on Sep 28, 2010 - 67 comments

If it's got alcohol in it, someone, somewhere will drink it. But sometimes, it's surprising to note how many bizarre non-alcoholic drinks there are. Some have become beloved by not only their native countries, but by foreigners and even, sometimes, health nuts. [more inside]
posted by InnocentBystander on Sep 12, 2007 - 23 comments