Taking the Rude Brew Plunge

I've meant to drink more kombucha than I do for a while now. It's tea and I like tea. (I've taken the Nestea plunge many times.) It is fermented and I like fermented foods. (Beer! Sauerkraut!) But I drink the stuff very sporadically. (Boo!)

Kombucha is prepared by adding a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast - that slimy thing floating inside your bottle) to sweetened tea - usually black tea, from my experience. You let it sit for a couple of weeks and voila! You've got kombucha. At some point in the process of making the commercial stuff, fruit (juice?), spices, and/or flowers are added. Probably sugar surplus to fermentation requirements too. Some of the stuff on store shelves has a fair amount of sugar in it. Kombucha contains at least some alcohol in it. I think I see "<0.5%" on bottles. I'm not sure if the fermentation process simply produces very little of it or it is removed. It must be the former. Removing alcohol is a complex and expensive process.

Kombucha has some fizziness and so there's a little bit of a bite to the drink along with a bit of tartness.

It doesn't seem that long ago that it was available only at the Willy Street Coop or a similar store. Then a brand or 2 from the west coast appeared in the coolers of more mainstream grocers. Soon enough Madisonians got in on things and we had local kombucha. At some point the drink became big business and now my supermarket's cooler has a whole lot of kombucha in it with maybe 1 local brand, if any. It's a big business these days and I can't help but think that behind the tie dye labels lurk a Kraft or other mega food corporation product. So I buy local, when possible.

A more recent purchase was Wisco Buds & Petals from Madison's Rude Brew.

 

 

Rude Brew dates back to 2017 when proprietor Lacy Rude threw caution to the wind and decided to become a purveyor of kombucha. The bottle gives an address on Sherman Avenue so it seems that she makes her tea at that northside shared commercial kitchen that I cannot remember the name of.

This brew has black & green teas along with elderflower, roses, hops, lavender, lemongrass, and Wisconsin hemp. Sounds delightful!

It looks like a gold color that's had a fair amount of red added to it - something like a white zinfandel. Opening the bottle released a fair amount of fizz. It smelled sweet and floral.

Since the weather gods had mistaken Madison for Phoenix, the temperature outside was 100 degrees and I was happy to find that the kombucha was light and fizzy with a not insignificant amount of tang to it. It tasted floral and herbal and the lemongrass with its floral-citrus thing was fairly prominent. Plus just a hint of sweetness.

I really loved this stuff, especially the floral taste. It wasn't too strong but there was no mistaking the presence of flowers. Just as the label promised, it was a herbal union and a delicious one.