A few myths about kombucha stick around. Here are the four we hear most often, answered honestly with real numbers from our own labels.
Myth 1: Kombucha is full of sugar
We brew tea with sugar, and it has to be that way: the SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) feeds on the sugar and breaks a large part of it down while the tea ferments. Without sugar there is no fermentation.
What ends up in the bottle is printed on every label: roughly 4.2 to 4.6 g of sugar per 100 ml, which works out to about 14 to 15 g in a 330 ml bottle. A classic lemonade sits at around 9 to 10 g per 100 ml. So our kombucha gets by with roughly half the sugar of a lemonade, and still tastes like something.
Myth 2: Kombucha is loaded with caffeine
There is some caffeine in it - we brew from tea, after all. Compared with coffee the amount is small. How much remains depends on the ratio of tea, water and sugar, and on the fermentation itself. After fermenting, up to a third of the original caffeine is still in the bottle.
Myth 3: Kombucha is a mushroom
No. The SCOBY looks a little like one, but it is not. It is a cellulose structure formed by bacteria and yeasts living together in symbiosis, which is exactly what the name says: Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast.
Myth 4: Kombucha is just a passing trend
Kombucha is having a moment in Germany and worldwide, but the drink is anything but new. Its roots reach back over 2,000 years. China is generally considered its origin, where it was known as the "tea of immortality", and there are early records from Korea and Russia too. Today the Americas are the biggest market, but Europe is catching up quickly.