Commercial Kombucha Beers (Lambrucha and Fleur)

Kombucha has been in the news recently because it has been pulled from the shelves due to an alcoholic content in excess of the .5% ABV cap on "non-alcoholic" beverages.  If you haven't heard of it, kombucha is a sweetened tea that is fermented with a mix of yeast (including Brettanomyces) and acid acetic producing bacteria.  I thought it might be interesting to try a couple of commercial beers that are blended with kombucha for sourness and complexity.

Some long time readers of the blog might remember my experiments with kombucha (including a Flanders Red Kombucha) about three years back.  I couldn't keep up with the cycle of production that keeping a kombucha culture demands (partially because my results weren't that great) so I eventually passed my scoby ("mushroom") off to my friend Nathan (who promptly threw it out).

The first beer is Lambrucha, a 3.5% ABV blend of year plus old lambic and kombucha from Vanberg & DeWulf (importers of such tasty beers as Saison Dupont, and Witkap Pater).  The result is more like carbonated lemonade than anything else.  Bright, citrusy, fresh, with vibrant carbon dioxide rising through the off-pink body, but not much head.  The low alcohol and citrusy tartness make it a wonderfully quenching/refreshing beer, but with 1 year old lambic as the main ingredient I would have hoped for more complexity and Brett character.  I would have been interesting to taste the lambic before and after blending to taste exactly what the kombucha contributed (I suspect that brightness that is rare in straight lambics).

Goose Island's Fleur looks and smells much more like a beer than Lambrucha (it is twice the alcohol so that isn't too surprising).  It pours a hazy light amberish-red with a small white head.  The aroma is very fruit, with strawberry and banana (and a light "artificial" bubblegum smell, maybe the hibiscus?).  The flavor is similar, but it adds a bit of spice and a faint tartness (even some malt...).  Fleur doesn't make the kombucha suggestion as strongly, relying on the fermented tea for complexity rather than as a main selling point (the bottle makes no mention of kombucha).  While it is a more complex beerier beer, it lacks the brightness and drinkability of the Lambrucha.

Two interesting beers that use kombucha in different ways.  I think as time goes on we will see more and more breweries blending kombucha into beers as a cheap/quick way to add some balancing acidity.  Blendiung non-beer beverages into beer seems to be getting more popular in general.  Lost Abbey for example has been doing blending beers with mead and wine as components. These are ll options for blending at home, and are all things that you can either make at home, or just buy for convenience and variety (as many people do for simple "bourbon barrel" beers).

Offbeat Yeast with Basic Brewing Radio

A few weeks ago James from the Basic Brewing Radio podcast invited me on the show to do a tasting of some beers I have fermented with things besides commercial brewers yeast. I sent him 10 bottles of my most interesting stuff, and last week we got to do a massive long distance night of drinking.

The first show covers making beer with bread yeast and with bread in it, kombucha culture, and Brettanomyces in the secondary. The second episode (recorded at the same time, but being posted next week) will cover brewing 100% Brett beers. It was lots of fun, and I think at least somewhat informative for anyone looking to make something that will really surprise their beer nerd friends.

Feel free to send any comments or questions my way, I haven't heard the second episode yet, but I can only imagine how unclear some of the information may have become after the amount of "sampling" that we did.

Here is an episode guide with links to the recipes, pictures, and notes for each batch.

1^st Episode:

Neo Kvass: Split batch with WY1056 and Red Star Bread Yeast

Kombucha Flanders Red: Super Sour

Traditional Flanders Red: Using the Wyeast Roeselare Blend

Cherry Bourbon Brett Dark Belgian Strong: Everything but the Kitchen Sink

2^ndEpisode:

Brett C Mini-Saison: No aeration, hot ferment

Brett A Mini- Saison: No aeration, hot ferment

Brett C Mo' Betta Bretta: Aeration, cool ferment

Brett A Mo' Betta Bretta: Aeration, cool ferment. Plain, and Cherry/Pinot Noir

Malt Kombucha Bottling and Tasting

Kombucha BottlingMy method for bottling is pretty simple. I put a funnel on top of a cleaned and sanitized beer bottle, then I add in some white sugar (normally I do 3/4 of a tsp per 12 oz, but despite using a bigger bottle I kept the same 3/4 tsp for this batch to keep the carbonation closer to that of regular beer) then pour kombucha in. I figure it isn't worth being careful and siphoning lime I do with beer because I will drink this long before oxidation would become an issue. I then leave the bottles out at room temperature for a week or two, during this time the yeast will produce CO2 which will slowly dissolve into the liquid to equalize the pressure in the head space. I then put the kombucha into the refrigerator until I am ready to drink it.

Tasting of my 1st attempt at malt kombucha

Appearance - The thin white head sits onto of a cloudy yellow liquid. It isn't chill haze, but bits of the kombucha culture itself.

Aroma - Plenty of sour vinegar (acetic acid) in the aroma, but it isn't enough to be sharp or offensive (to me anyway). Behind that is an earthy note along with some hay. It is similar to my plain kombucha (which I have failed to do a full tasting of).

Taste - Tip of the tongue wake you up acidity fades to a worty sweetness in the back of the mouth. As I continue to drink, the sourness fades a bit leaving a rather smooth flavor profile.

Mouthfeel - Mild carbonation with a medium-light body. Definitely a different effect than the spritzy carbonation and ultra thin body I normally end up with on my plain kombucha batches.

Drinkability/Notes - Not the tastiest beverage I have concocted, but it certain proves that this is a viable idea. Next time I think I will leave it for more than 10 days before bottling to try to get rid of the under attenuated flavor. According to my hydrometer reading the apparent attenuation was about 50% on this batch.

Flanders Red Kombucha

Flanders Red is just about the only beer style that any acetic acid (vinegar) is considered acceptable. La Folie from New Belgium and Rodenbach Grand Cru often have a sharp acetic contribution, not too much unlike a nice kombucha. Thus an idea formed in my head, why wait a total of 18 months for my "traditional" Flanders Red to age when I can make a low alcohol copy in 2 weeks with my kombucha culture.

So after I bottled my first attempt at making malt extract kombucha, which seems to have gone very well, I decided to give it a shot. I brought 2 qrts filtered water up to 150 degrees and added 1 oz CaraVienna, 1 oz CaraMunich, and .5 oz CaraAroma (these three caramel malts will give the "beer" its characteristic red color, dark fruit flavors, and residual sweetness) along with 5 oz of light DME. I let it steep for 30 minutes before running my skimmer though it to remove the spent grain. From there my process was the same as any other kombucha (boil, cool, pitch, ferment, prime, bottle).

Fermentation has been going much faster and cleaner now that I have temps in the 80s on the kitchen windowsill, it is these same high temperatures that are stopping me from doing another batch of sauerkraut which likes temps in the mid-60s.

Malt-Kombucha

My first attempt to combine kombucha and beer is underway. I used the same 2.5 oz of sugar (in this case pale malt extract)to 1 quart of water recipe that I use with standard kombucha, in addition I left the tea out. The tea is normally included partly for flavor and partly to provide a nutrient source to the yeast/bacteria because white sugar is pure sucrose. Malt is not a pure sugar so it should contain give the culture plenty of nutrition.

As you can see the culture (at the bottom) has grown quite large since the last photo I posted of it, and fermentation is generally visible within 24 hours of pitching.

It remains to be seen if the yeast and bacteria that make up the kombucha "mushroom" will be able to utilize the more complex maltose that makes up the bulk of malt extract. It will be about 2 weeks before I have a taste test for this one, but I am really looking forward to it. The next step will be to split the culture and try adding hops.

Tasting Notes.

Culturing Kombucha from a Commercial Bottle

I got a comment on this, I didn't really give enough detail on exactly how I went from a bottle of Tea Chi to having a gelatinous disk of microbes. Essentially, I applied the same principles to get it that you can to harvest yeast from a commercial beer, start small and go bigger as the microbes can handle it. If you go too big too fast the microbes will take a long time to grown and ferment and might get overrun by the local microbes who might not make such a tasty beverage.

I let the whole bottle of Kombucha warm up to room temperature, I then poured it into a sanitized mason jar. I generally don't sanitize now but I wanted to give the microbes a head start because they might be weak after being refrigerated for a couple of weeks. To them I added about a cup of cooled unfermented Kombucha (just cooled tea with .75 oz of white sugar dissolved in it). Every few weeks I would add some more of this sweetened tea moving up to larger vessels when needed until the Kombucha “mushroom” had grown quite large. I dumped out this first batch because it had gotten very sour because of how long the culture had been fermenting without a large replacement or liquid.

When it gets big enough you can just start bottling 90% of the liquid before adding the fresh nutrient solution.

Kombucha 101

I realize that many people have never heard of kombucha, I certainly hadn't until I spent a couple of weeks in Denver (where the local Whole Foods carried 5 brands of it) awhile back. It originated in China and can best be described as a slightly sweetened tea that is soured by a jelly fish like cluster of microbes.

Kombucha appeals to me because it is much faster and easier to make than funky beers, in addition it has almost no sugar and less than .5% abv, so I can feel good drinking it whenever I want. I grew my culture (left) from a bottle of what I felt to be the best kombucha I had in Denver (Tea Chi), but there are commercially available cultures that require less work if you are so inclined or if you can't get a bottle locally.

The finished product can vary greatly depending on your culture. Some are clean and sharply acidic, but it should come as no surprise that my favorite brand had plenty of funk (in particular our old friend Brettanomyces). The tea doesn't have too much impact on the finished drink, it serves primarily as a nutrient source for the culture (and as such it can't be left out in favor of other flavorings).

Here is my basic recipe:

1. Bring 1 qrt of water to a boil

2. Take it off the heat and soak 2 tea bags or 2 tsp of the tea of your choice for 15 minutes (the longer brew time extracts more nitrogen and nutrients),

3. Dissolve 2.5 oz of white sugar into the tea

4. Cool to 70 degrees

5. Pitch your culture and about 10% of the previous batch to lower the acidity.

6. The culture needs oxygen, so just put a paper towel over your container and hold it in place with a rubber band.

7. After two weeks of fermenting in the high 60's the kombucha is ready to bottle

8. I generally put it into old plastic soda bottles with a 1/2 tsp of sugar, screw the cap on and wait for the bottle to feel pressurized (normally about 4 days)

9. At that point I put the bottles into the fridge and they are ready to go

Sanitation is not as important as it is with beer fermentation because with kombucha not only do you already have multiple microbes working together in the culture but also it is open to the air so some microbes are going to get in there regardless of your sanitation.

The next step in my process is to build up a big enough mother culture so that I can start splitting off daughter cultures to begin playing with. In particular I hope to find out if the culture is able to do its thing in the presence of hops...