I got carded in whole foods
February 18, 2017 4:41 PM   Subscribe

 
I don't drink alcohol and I do occasionally drink kombucha (both home-fermented and store bought) and I've never felt a buzz. I can pick up the taste of alcohol in pretty small amounts. I remember the talk about pasteurization back in 2010 and I guess I assumed most of the larger brands were pasteurized?
posted by jeweled accumulation at 4:53 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've tried what should have been some very nice kombucha, on tap. The flavor was lovely, but all I could smell was eau de socks, and I couldn't hang with that. It was listed at .5% ABV, but there was no way I was drinking enough of it to feel anything.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:53 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Kombucha is possibly the strangest food fad I have ever seen, it tastes foul and has zero health benefits yet half the people I know cannot get enough of it, I am honestly and sincerely baffled.

(not only zero health benefits but plenty of evidence of it actually being bad for you...)
posted by Cosine at 4:57 PM on February 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh, so that's what that crap is all about then?
posted by Artw at 4:59 PM on February 18, 2017


My favorite beer is 9.5% ABV, so I can't imagine what kind of a lightweight you'd have to be to get a buzz from kombucha.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:02 PM on February 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


I'm pretty sure my friends in Williamsburg subsist solely on kale and kombucha. I can't stand the stuff, though maybe if it were 10% abv...
posted by dudemanlives at 5:03 PM on February 18, 2017


FWIW dept.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 -- Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has introduced legislation (S. 389) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 "to ensure that kombucha is exempt from any excise taxes and regulations imposed on alcoholic beverages."

I have no idea why this bill. However, Wyden is a pretty good guy and one of the leaders of the Resistance in the Senate. There may be more than meets the eye, or maybe a cigar is just a cigar.
posted by charlesminus at 5:09 PM on February 18, 2017


charlesminus: Do you know the reasoning why an alcoholic beverage should be exempt from alcohol law?
posted by Cosine at 5:12 PM on February 18, 2017


Lots of kombucha haters. I really like the taste (not into the nutrition mumbo jumbo or price), but I go for sour and funky beers, too.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 5:15 PM on February 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


I was listening in on a telephone town hall with Polis the day before yesterday, and he mentioned this as part of his rundown of "Other" things he's working on.

And I like kombucha because I like carbonation but I don't like soda, sparkling water gets boring after a little while, and I cannot reasonably drink beer all day.
posted by ernielundquist at 5:18 PM on February 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


I have come across a few people at food co-ops that sell it and I am just not comfortable ingesting a fermented 'tea' that someone has basically made in their bathtub (I know its not literally made in a bathtub).
posted by robbyrobs at 5:19 PM on February 18, 2017


30 years ago somebody I knew swore it fixed their IBS and helped with their arthritis and brought me a hunk of gelatinous goo in some liquid and I was polite. I'd just used most of my tupperware to freeze soup so we put it in a big cake carrier which got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten about until I came home 6 months later and was cleaning out the fridge.

It didn't smell bad or good. There was this scummy build up of pie sized layers. Roommate said he'd been keeping an eye on it.

So I pushed the pancakes down until I could get a ladle full of the liquid and poured it in in a cup and downed it. It was really complex and totally unlike anything I had ever tasted and my jaw got tingly so I did it again. Then roommate did it and we just kept going until we'd gone through almost a gallon and started eating the pancakes.

You how some people can't handle tequila or bourbon gets them extra fucked up? Well this was that for us. Made us super silly. There was definitely an extra something besides alcohol. And no hangover. We saved a couple pancakes and let them regenerate. I was bemused when it became a thing that people paid for.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 5:26 PM on February 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


In a rare alliance, free-spirited believers will side with ardent conservatives in demanding that big government stay out of their lives.

The idea that ardent conservatives will demand that the government stay out of the lives of anyone they don't happen to identify with or support is pretty fucking hiliarious.
posted by howfar at 5:35 PM on February 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Seriously, how utterly imbecilic does a person have to be in order to believe the "small government" bullshit of conservative myth-making?
posted by howfar at 5:38 PM on February 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Blue Mountain e-greeting cards

Wow, there's something I haven't thought about in a long time.

I wrote an article back about kombucha right after the crackdown, and actually a lot of the smaller producers told me it was great for them because they were able to reformulate for the new rules much faster than the big brands owned by Coke etc (some of whom never rejoined the market) and got their products back on empty shelves much faster.
posted by retrograde at 5:38 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Twenty years ago I met a kombucha fanatic. I didn't mind the stuff. But when she showed me her jar and offered me a piece of the "mother" (the original floating fungi thing) I got a little grossed out. As far as the alcohol content goes...meh.
posted by kozad at 5:48 PM on February 18, 2017


I'm pretty sure my friends in Williamsburg subsist solely on kale and kombucha. I can't stand the stuff, though maybe if it were 10% abv...

I would totally eat alcoholic caldo verde. I mean, I eat the regular non-alcoholic kind too, but still.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:58 PM on February 18, 2017


I'd swap out kombucha for a good hearty red wine, though.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:58 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ardent conservatives and free-spirited kombucha believers? Are we to leave the defense of liberty to these two sorry lots? Healthfood junkies, I disapprove of your disgusting fermented beverage but I will defend to the point of slight inconvenience your right to make it, drink it, buy it, sell it, and stock it on grocery store shelves so long as its alcohol content is labeled with reasonable accuracy.
posted by sfenders at 6:01 PM on February 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Lots of kombucha haters. I really like the taste (not into the nutrition mumbo jumbo or price), but I go for sour and funky beers, too.

This. Also: if you like kombucha, it is dead simple and dirt cheap to brew at home; very much more so than homebrewing beer. I'm finding it really scratches my itch for "want to brew something tasty, but already have too much beer in the house."

(SCOBYs are gross though: a slimy mat of gelatinous biological goo.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:02 PM on February 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


My partner really likes the taste of kombucha. I don't get it, myself. I like sour flavours a lot of the time, but kombucha just tastes like vinegar to me. No, thanks.

Anyway, I bring it up because she started making her own kombucha at home, and it really is quite easy to do. If you make it in a clear jar, it'll be obvious if your batch gets contaminated by anything nasty. And all you do then is retrieve the scoby, re-sanitise the jar, then put the scoby back in and start over. Other than that, it's just about knowing how much sugar to add and when.

The nice thing from my perspective is that the kombucha wound up being a gateway project to ginger beer brewing, which is a fairly similar process. (The ginger beer sits around for a second ferment after you pour it off into bottles, that's the biggest difference as far as I can tell.) And the ginger beer is pretty delicious.

The "ew, bacteria and yeast!" reaction to fermented food and drinks is kind of amusing, actually. The yeasts that do the fermentation produce natural defenses against all the microbes that will actually kill you (as well as eating up all the food that the bad microbes would have grown on). Which is actually a big part of why you saw such a wide variety of fermented food staples in the pre-refrigeration world.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:18 PM on February 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


I love kombucha and I am currently attempting to brew it myself and I will never apologize.
posted by delight at 6:50 PM on February 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Why does everyone think kombucha is gross? It's amazing. And, like all things homemade, it's even more amazing when you make it yourself. (My favorite kind is hopped kombucha, which is better than beer if you ask me.)

Yes, it's like drinking vinegar, because that's basically what kombucha is. Drinking vinegar is really good, too! (And that goes double for homemade vinegar! I've never tried hopped vinegar, though, which I guess is just spoiled beer? I should try that sometime.)

Anyway, I guess this is all to say, seriously, give making it at home a try, it's really easy and much better than what you can buy in Whole Foods.
posted by ragtag at 6:52 PM on February 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


My favorite kind is hopped kombucha, which is better than beer if you ask me.

I've got a gallon dry-hopping with Citra right now...
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:07 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I love beers from the Tart & Funky section at the local bottle market. Kombucha tastes basically the same as sour beers and wild ales, but I can drink them while driving and find them at Target.
posted by sleeping bear at 7:17 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


wait, so when i got lazy and left that pitcher of tea in the fridge until it grew this gross mold all over it... i could've sold that to yuppies for $$$$?
posted by indubitable at 7:36 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I like kombucha, not as an all day every day thing, but the occasional bottle is lovely.

And, what? A fermented beverage has alcohol? This is my shocked and appalled face.
posted by Samizdata at 7:38 PM on February 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Kombucha is possibly the strangest food fad I have ever seen, it tastes foul

Obv you don't like it, but you get the fact that taste is subjective, right? I mean...I don't think I could handle making it myself, because I get skeeved out even by blue cheese, but I love Revive OG something fierce. Way tastier than soda.

Some of the kombucha at Whole Foods required ID when I worked there - and you couldn't drink some while working, so probably the alcohol affects some people.
posted by greermahoney at 7:57 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you have never tried it, is the kombucha at Whole Foods an acceptable place to start? If so, any brand in particular?
posted by chimpsonfilm at 8:52 PM on February 18, 2017


That photo at the top of the page is the worst thing I've seen in a while. Waugh.
posted by XtinaS at 9:09 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've been drinking GT brand for about a year after I got an ulcer followed by acid reflux/GERD. It really calms my stomach, but so does Bragg apple cider vinegar diluted with water. The lemonade is especially tasty. I was told that the green tea, caffeeine and alcohol are mostly transformed during the brewing, but maybe not.

I also brewed my own, which is pretty easy, but quit drinking my own because I was having dizziness attacks, but it turns out that was from anxiety and now it is not a problem.

Our Costco recently started carrying cases from Portland, Oregon. Now that I know how much green tea and caffeine remains I'll probably cut back.
posted by mecran01 at 9:15 PM on February 18, 2017


I've only had kombucha at "natural" health fairs. It was upleasant. But possibly, people who are pushing alternative medicine aren't the best sources of deliciousness. Maybe I'll give these folks a try when the farmers market opens up next month.

On the other hand, tobascodagama's comment sent me down the fermented products rabbit hole and the next thing I knew I had a jar of lemon pickle cooking on the window sill.
posted by zennie at 9:15 PM on February 18, 2017


I don't drink alcohol and I do occasionally drink kombucha (both home-fermented and store bought) and I've never felt a buzz.

My favorite beer is 9.5% ABV, so I can't imagine what kind of a lightweight you'd have to be to get a buzz from kombucha.

I get drunk on store-bought kombucha like GT's. I flush and I get dizzy and I have to lie down to recover. :( I love the stuff though!
posted by peripathetic at 9:45 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


All I can think of when someone mentions Kambucha is when a friend bestowed a huge one on me in a erienmyer beaker. I found it disturbing like a disk of flesh floating on tea.
I actually drank some of the liquid but did not find it remarkable in any way.

The paperwork that came with it said it was "sensitive to negative energy" and that it should not be exposed to it. It seemed indifferent to my feelings about it and continued to grow to my dismay. On Halloween I got these oversized rolly eyeballs and put them in the flask and arranged them along with a pair of billybob teeth to make a face on the fleshy surface. To my disgust the Kambucha grew around the teeth and eyes within a couple of weeks to look like a melted face in a beaker.

It was relegated to the shed where it refused to die.
posted by boilermonster at 10:15 PM on February 18, 2017 [28 favorites]


It tastes like athlete's foot juice.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:38 PM on February 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I love this kind of kombucha, but man, is it expensive.
posted by 41swans at 11:01 PM on February 18, 2017


I love tart and funky beers, and I even like fancy drinking vinegar, but I just don't get kombucha. To me, it tastes like a jock strap that died. Alas.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:10 PM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Small batch locally brewed kombucha can be way too alcoholic for my taste. GTs is much more reliably non-alcohol, which is important to me.
posted by jfwlucy at 11:57 PM on February 18, 2017


My parents got on board kombucha back in the 90s, so I was forced to drink it. I was never okay with drinking this sour, fizzy liquid that was 100% alien parasite pee. It was homemade, so I could see the fungus thing that was growing on top of it. I could see its little spores in the liquid. I knew I was ingesting it. My parents, eventually, got sick of trying to convince me to stop drinking it.

My new boss drinks it. I feel like I probably shouldn't have told her about how much I hate it.
posted by Merus at 1:03 AM on February 19, 2017


I don't do this often, but couldn't resist:

MetaFilter: a slimy mat of gelatinous biological goo.
posted by TedW at 2:07 AM on February 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am Japanese. We Japanese eat a fair amount of kombu (seaweed) in our diet (island nation, etc.) But as for making a tea with kombu, it is only done ceremonially at New Years and I drink a sip for tradition and that's it. Whatever 'kombucha' is in the US, it is certainly NOT Japanese in origin.
posted by gen at 2:59 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Whatever 'kombucha' is in the US, it is certainly NOT Japanese in origin.

As far as I know, no one claims it is. Although it is ascribed a vague southeast Asian origin somewhere back in the mists of time, including some legendary links to Japan (in particular due to the coincidence of names you note), the origin of the actual thing drunk today is mostly seen as Russia or Ukraine. Whether that's really accurate is not entirely clear to me.
posted by howfar at 3:22 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm probably as skeptical and as jaded as one could be, with the alcohol tolerance of an old copper pot still.

But apparently I can get a goofy buzz going from a bottle of kombucha.

And it's not quite like a beer or wine buzz. Imagine the effervescent first few minutes of a nice beer buzz, but then make it mentally sort of lemony and zesty. Now discard the heavy, leaden feeling that often comes from ordering a second pint of beer, or even finishing your first, and make it last about 2-3 hours. Imagine coffee doing what it was advertised it would do as stated by a pastiche of a 1950s TV advertisement for coffee - insufferably perky.

Have you seen the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie? Remember Zaphod's lemon juicer helmet? It feels a lot like that.

I'm not sure what the effect is from, but it definitely isn't a placebo. I suspect it has a lot to do with the amount of vitamin B/niacin in the brew, perhaps combined with a bit of caffeine and alcohol. Maybe with whatever bracing effect you can get from drinking a shot of cold pickle brine or cider vinegar. Or maybe there's some other psychoactive effect from the fermentation byproducts themselves that has yet to be identified.

It should also be noted that I've meet a lot of ex drinkers and/or alcoholics that report that kombucha is a really good way to stave off alcohol cravings. This apparently works with the extremely low alcohol bottled retail brands, too, and no, they're not drinking it by the truckload or anything. Maybe a bottle or two a day.

This all reminds me of my favorite (and perhaps only) kombucha story:

I live in a small and very hippy PNW town. It's the kind of place where something like quinoa granola isn't even the weirdest thing in the local food co-op - and the local food co-op has several kinds of live kombucha on tap. It's also the kind of place where several bars and breweries also have live kombucha on tap right next to the IPAs and hard ciders, which people drink or enjoy in place of beer, or sometimes in lieu of beer, or between beers.

It's the sort of place that knows what kombucha is, and it collectively drinks a lot of it.

So, I'm sitting on one of the many docks in the waterfront parks around here waiting for a friend to get off of work, and I'm openly drinking a beer. In this case it's a 22 oz bomber of a lovely Scotch ale from one of our local brewers, and drinking beers on the beach and docks is definitely such a common local practice I've long since forgotten the idea and concept of it being, uh, illegal. It's so widely practiced and normalized here that there's even a local spit of disused beach that's widely known as LSB, which stands for liquor store beach.

Anyway, I finish my beer and dispose of my bottle in the nearest recycling bin, and not more than a minute later I'm joined by my friend, who is drinking a kombucha. Which is packaged in a short, squat brown bottle almost exactly like the ones used for a Sessions or Red Stripe lager. Or a bottle of Stumptown cold brew. (Yep, this story couldn't get any more PNW if it had Sasquatch wearing flannel surfing an orca down an active volcano.)

So he's standing there drinking his kombucha and a local cop somehow sneaks up on us. This doesn't happen to me even in big cities, and it certainly never happens here. It certainly hasn't happened since then, either.

"Hi, we just had a report of someone drinking beer out here." The officer says after introducing himself to us. I recognize the name of the officer, and he's apparently the only one in town who does this kind of thing and has a reputation for being a killjoy.

"No, officer, we're not drinking any beer." we say. Which is true. My beer is gone, my friend hasn't even seen it so has no need to lie, and he's drinking a kombucha which... oh, shit, looks just like a bottle of beer.

"Well, what's that?" The officer prods.

"Uh, kombucha?" My friend says.

"What's kombucha?" the officer asks and somehow my friend and I are able to communicate the following paragraph to each other with just a look, the way stoners do that cops hate: "Dude, how does a local cop *not* know what kombucha is? Isn't there a test about this kind of thing that they have to take? He's not going to like the answer 'It's a fermented mushroom tea.' is he? That's just going to sound weird and be even more of a pain in the ass to explain. We're going to get fuckin' tazed if we don't answer just the right way, aren't we?"

"It's a kind of iced tea." My friend says, drily. The officer sniffs the bottle, looks at it in confusion, pronounces that 'it smells like socks'. Then he gives up and stomps away down the dock.

Which was good, because we really just wanted to sit in the sun and smoke an after work joint.
posted by loquacious at 4:38 AM on February 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


I'm enough of a lightweight to have gotten a buzz from kombucha. I used to walk by Whole Foods on the way to work and one day I thought "what the hell, let's see what the fuss is about." I haven't been much of a drinker for years, but around that time I could probably count the number of drinks I had in a year on my fingers. I was sort of surprised at the buzz, and slightly concerned that it was happening at work, but mostly disappointed by how unappealing the kombucha was.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:39 AM on February 19, 2017


I think kombucha tastes like it went bad, and yet, I do belong to one of those facebook groups for home fermenting (I'm trying with some sauerkraut.) There is a LOT of kombucha advice that boils down to "This tastes funny, but should it taste funnier?"

Right now the hot topic is everyone trying to convince a new member that a honey garlic ferment (put chopped garlic in a jar, cover it with raw honey, come back later) isn't a botulism risk. Nobody seems to have a defense of that position that's any good, and that plus the completely disgusting shots of people's kombucha mothers and the "is this mold bad? or can I eat it?" means I am probably going to be an ex-member soon.
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:45 AM on February 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've only had kombucha at "natural" health fairs. It was upleasant. But possibly, people who are pushing alternative medicine aren't the best sources of deliciousness.

Oh, absolutely not. They're the kind of people who truck in weird purity myths. Anything that tastes good will probably give you cancer. But if you eliminate all sources of joy from your life, you can live forever.

We Japanese eat a fair amount of kombu (seaweed) in our diet (island nation, etc.) But as for making a tea with kombu, it is only done ceremonially at New Years and I drink a sip for tradition and that's it.

Kombucha has nothing to do with kombu, oddly enough! According to Wikipedia, the drink got its name because somebody named Kombu brought it to Japan from Manchuria, but that sounds like 100% bullshit to me. Wikipedia alternately suggests that the name in English is a misapplication of the name of the seaweed tea to a completely different drink. Since it involves westerners fucking something up, it's definitely the most plausible origin in my book.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:03 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Honey garlic ferment" sounds terrifying. We had to persuade our hippy wedding caterer not to kill everybody with something similar.
posted by werkzeuger at 7:03 AM on February 19, 2017


It sounds both delicious and terrifying to me. But I wouldn't serve it at a wedding unless I was trying to really solidify my path of succession to a throne. (And then I'd also break out the salmon mousse and the potato salad!)
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:22 AM on February 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm not a massive fan of kombucha but some varieties are decent despite having a pungent aroma.

It seems like it's something that small brewers especially those that specialize in funky or wild beers can make in decent quantities and have on tap.

Most of the tap brew houses that allow people to buy growlers or crowlers of beer also seem to have a small number if kombucha varieties on tap. It seems like it's a good alternative for people that want to go there with friends but don't want to drink IPAs all day. It's also way cheaper than drinking most microbrews.

I think it's also something you can drink at work. Yeah you might get some people making faces at the taste or smell but it's way more acceptable than drinking on the job.

I doubt I would ever go drink some kombuchas after doing some hard outdoor work but I get how some people would like that.
posted by vuron at 8:27 AM on February 19, 2017


the first person I knew who was into it is a fool (told me to get the real facts about FEMA camps from Jesse Ventura) and this has colored my opinion of the beverage, I must admit
posted by thelonius at 9:55 AM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


  Drinking vinegar is really good, too!

eh, it's what the hardcore winos from my hometown used to drink if they couldn't get to hairspray or furniture polish. Gets you there, if you don't mind going there with corroded teeth.
posted by scruss at 9:58 AM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I definitely experience some sort of upper effect from drinking kombucha. Not the alcohol, my tolerance is rather high right now (I actually might have another crack at using kombucha in place of wine, it worked ok the one time I tried it). It's sort of a feeling of mental clarity and wellbeing, without the feeling from coffee of your adrenals being turned up to 11.

I have no funny kombucha stories, but I once went to a workshop on fermenting your own kefir. The speaker was giving out starter for people to take home. I declined to do so after he described how he cured his ulcerative colitis by, err, inserting some of said starter.
posted by iffthen at 10:11 AM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the first time I encountered kombucha at the store, I thought "Hey, two of the very few Japanese words I know! Seaweed tea, huh? What an interesting idea." So I bought a bottle to try it.

After the first sip, I was pretty sure seaweed had never been near the stuff. After the second, I was sure I didn't want to be.
posted by biogeo at 10:14 AM on February 19, 2017


My wife tried the whole homemade kombucha thing, and I hated to see the scobies go to waste, so I tried making scoby jerky. "Jerky" is not an appropriate descriptor....more like gym sock fruit roll-up.
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 10:30 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Personally I love komboucha, and I can't wait to start making my own someday. Probably this Spring. (I'm bogged down with work at the moment.) I even treasure that 'wet socks mixed with pee' smell.

However, I gave some to my aunts to try? They couldn't even stomach a sip of it. "This is vinegar! You're drinking vinegar! You're so WEIRD!"
posted by spinifex23 at 10:32 AM on February 19, 2017


GT's Gingerade in the brown bottle is on of my favorite things to drink. It's fizzy and sour and slightly gingery. I like fizzy drinks but not the sugar, and I definitely like sour beers.

Like many other yeast fermented things, kombucha has B vitamins, and my stomach is generally a lot more calm when I drink kombucha regularly.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:33 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Kombucha pretty consistently makes my emotions go haywire in the same way hormonal birth control does.
posted by aniola at 11:03 AM on February 19, 2017


The top MeFi comments here all seem to boil down to: why do people like this thing that I dislike?
posted by splitpeasoup at 2:00 PM on February 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I predict that the Next Big Thing will be switchel, a drink made of vinegar, ginger, molasses and water that was a popular refreshment among New England farmhands from the 1700s into the 1900s.
posted by virago at 2:11 PM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Further thoughts: Artisanal switchel has actually made some small inroads here in contemporary northern New England, but it hasn't been popularized to the level of appearing in supermarkets or convenience stores.
posted by virago at 2:18 PM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Well, I didn't know that it has alcohol, and as a non drinker that's more than annoying.

I buy it occasionally just because I like the taste, but not often because of the price. The negative reactions here are surprising. But I like malta too, so...

I predict that the Next Big Thing will be switchel, a drink made of vinegar, ginger, molasses and water

That sounds like it was created just for me.
posted by bongo_x at 2:24 PM on February 19, 2017


Still more thoughts (sorry for the flurry of posts -- I must be hopped up on ferments): I just reread the article that I linked, and I realize that I overlooked the reference to a Vermont switchelry (?) whose product is sold at Fairway.

So it's time to get on board before makers start selling out to Big Switchel and the trend jumps the shark.
posted by virago at 2:31 PM on February 19, 2017




switchel is so last summer

As a Mainer, I will always loyally embrace any food or beverage that contains vinegar, no matter what's on trend in New York.

(Runs out the door to buy salt and vinegar potato chips, in lieu of the county fair French fries soaked in white vinegar that I suddenly crave.)
posted by virago at 2:39 PM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


The top MeFi comments here all seem to boil down to: why do people like this thing that I dislike?


It's not quite that simple, this is a product that people believe has magical yet unprovable health properties and has real evidence of actually being bad for you, as in possibly dangerous to your health. It should be regulated right along with health supplements and the vitamin industry.
posted by Cosine at 4:42 PM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Another thing I like about the GT komboucha in particular - the glasses are wide enough that I can repurpose them easily, and thus I use mine to store homemade cold brew coffee concentrate in them.
posted by spinifex23 at 4:49 PM on February 19, 2017


I should have known somebody throwing a snit about being carded was a guy. I've never seen a woman above legal drinking age complain about being carded. Heck, if you're a bartender and you want to date older women, you can pick up a lot of women that way.
posted by jonp72 at 4:58 PM on February 19, 2017


It should be regulated right along with health supplements and the vitamin industry

Joke's on you! Vitamins and supplements are only barely regulated!
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:30 PM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


A year ago our group was discussing seaweed, including こんぶ (konbu), and the tea made from it, 昆布茶こんぶちゃ (konbucha), which is not the same as kombucha, though the latter term might have originated from the former.

The Japanese for the SCOBY kombucha is 紅茶こうちゃキノコ (kouchakinoko, literally "black tea mushroom").

(And I'm happy to find out you can use ruby tags and furigana in Metafilter comments!)
posted by kurumi at 11:14 PM on February 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Well shit, I had never tried kombucha before reading this thread and y'all got me intrigued so I just got some GT's gingerberry and it's really fucking delicious. UGH I can't afford it so it'll be a once in a while treat I guess. (I'm moving this week, that's my treat yo self excuse for this one.) BTW the bottle does say that it has naturally occurring alcohol but Walgreens did not card me for it.
posted by misskaz at 1:06 PM on February 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Y'all, I'm a middle aged Southerner, so I'll be clutching a glass of sweet tea when they shove me into the crematorium fires. I'm a firm believer in Tea in all her glorious forms. But I have lived on a commune, and I have traveled with Ren people, and circus people, and gather for Family, and as such I've spent a goodly number of decades around people who will ferment anything that will stand still long enough to have yeast added to it, and I just cannot wrap my head around how popular kombucha has become. It's like...it's like if everyone decided to wear patchouli again. It's just weird. And speaking as the elder voice of wisdom here; if you didn't ferment it, and it's not pasteurized, you should not drink it.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:42 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have no hate for Kombucha, I like it sometimes, though its spectacular rise as a cureall is OTT. As far as fermented drinks go, I think ginger beer (not ginger ale but the kind made from a Ginger beer plant) is my favorite and I'd be perfectly fine if it rose to the top of the soft drink market.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:23 AM on February 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


i'm not a huge fan of GT dave's other than the trilogy flavor (excellent hangover helper), but luckily there's a local brand House that makes this ginger fire kombucha and it's the best thing when you're feeling a cold coming on. it's like a super spicy ginger beer with a bit of funk. also their rose black kombucha is excellent and refreshing, and i like that none of their bottles have as big a scoby loogie on the top as GT dave's bottles do

also kombucha beer is definitely a thing, i've had a prickly pear one that was actually pretty good
posted by burgerrr at 11:29 AM on February 21, 2017


My wife bought me a case of kombucha from Costco last week (GT's Gingerade I think) for its health benefits. I very carefully tried some on Saturday morning and while I didn't care for it, I didn't find it terrible either. I think her plan was for me to drink a glass of it every day, but yesterday afternoon I looked kombucha up on Wikipedia and it didn't exactly provide a ringing endorsement of it. Now I'm reading that it is mildly alcoholic as well - something that I don't recall noticing on the bottle. This is problematic for me because I'm a Muslim and don't drink alcohol. I'm going to have to give the remaining 4-5 bottles to someone else once I can find someone to take them off my hands.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:08 PM on February 21, 2017


You might look at the Talk page for the Wiki article.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:54 PM on February 21, 2017


I've got a gallon dry-hopping with Citra right now.

Update: is good.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:22 PM on February 27, 2017


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