How the professionals do kombucha
by Adeline Panamaroff
Fizzy, sour, with hints of fruits and herbs. These are the sensations and flavours I enjoy when I drink the kombucha that I brew at home. I started brewing several years ago after I had to give up caffeine due to a sensitivity. I wanted to continue drinking green tea and improve my gut health, which is how I found kombucha. Over the years, I have tried different flavour combinations and brewing methods, which led me to wonder; how do the professionals do it?
For Byron Hradoway, his journey to kombucha was also through home brewing. “It was just something new to try. I’ve always been into homebrewing, fermenting stuff, like wine, beer, mead. I bought a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeasts) kit and went from there,” Hradoway explains. He says that it is easy to make too much kombucha, something I have never had a problem with, as I stick to a strict one week brewing schedule.
For Hradoway, making too much was a happy accident, as it prompted him and two friends, Jennifer Darling and Brian MacLean, to think about marketing their product.
“Jen and I come from a graphic design background—we came up with the branding, all of the product identity and then we did farmers’ markets. A month later we hit the ground running,” says Hradoway,
“We financed it ourselves and pulled a BDC loan to help finish up our space in Old Strathcona in the fall of 2019. At one point this was our full-time job, but since the pandemic it’s back to a side-hustle,” he says.
Kombucha is a gut friendly, fermented sweet tea that makes use of a SCOBY for the fermentation process. SCOBY are layers of beneficial yeasts and bacteria that float on top of the brewed tea, eating up the sugar and caffeine in the liquid, creating a natural fizziness as a by-product of that digestion.
“The big thing with kombucha; it is full of probiotics, amino acids and digestive enzymes. Some people drink it specifically just for those health benefits,” says Hradoway.
Boocha Kombucha’s approach is to deliver kombucha as an alternative to sodas or as a cocktail mix. To keep the flavours of their brew lighter and less sour, Hradoway and his team only put their kombucha through one fermentation phase, and use forced carbination to achieve bubbles that a second ferment would do naturally.
I have always enjoyed doing the second ferment, as this is where I add flavour. Usually this is dried pear slices, from locally grown Edmonton pear trees; tart, like most fruit grown in the Canadian Prairies. These small yellow fruit gems add a sweetness to my homebrewed kombucha that mellows the sour unflavoured ferment.
Boocha Kombucha uses Alberta grown and refined sugar beet sugar from Taber and the aluminium cans are manufactured in Calgary. The organic tea and dried orange peel are purchased from a tea distributor in Vancouver, and other flavourings come from further aboard. “Those [glass] bottles are actually manufactured in Germany. The cost to ship them across the ocean just didn’t make sense. Cans are a little bit lighter. They allow us to do things a little bit differently. It seemed to be what retailers wanted.”
Boocha uses a green and black tea blend for the kombucha base. How long does it takes to ferment and process their brew? “Generally 10 to 14 days from raw loose tea to final can,” says Hradoway.
One of the unique aspects of their brewing process is they ferment the kombucha in repurposed Jack Daniels oak barrels (from Tennessee). Other commercial brewers use large metal vats for fermentation. Hradoway says that oak helps to mellow the sour flavour of the kombucha even further.
Hradoway plans to develop flavours based on local ingredients and add seasonal limited editions to the lineup; “I’ve always wanted to incorporate more local berries into seasonal stuff. I really want to go around the area and pick fruit from city trees, a forage concept.”
For cat lovers, Boocha Kombucha offers craft Snorri Soda, in navel orange and ginger ale and seasonal flavours such as rhubarb and saskatoon berry. The labels feature Hradoway’s cat Snorri.
Boocha Kombucha, just off Whyte Avenue offers its kombucha in the taproom two days a week (Fridays and Saturdays) in cans or growlers, and can be found at select retailers like Farrow and Ace Coffee Roasters.
During the summer you can also find them at the St. Albert Farmers’ Market and the 124th Street Farmers’ Market in Edmonton.