Having finished sampling NessAlla's regular flavors, i.e. - non-mocktail kombuchas, I wasn't sure where to turn next. While I suspect that there is at least one other brand of the tasty tea fermented here in Madison, I did not see it at Woodman's. However, on a stop at the Willy Street Co-op, I noticed Soul Brew in their cooler and remembered seeing their stand at the South Shore Farmers' Market back in 2022. My Frau bought some back then and I recalled finding it tasty.
I am not sure if it was Soul Brew's founder, Alesia Miller, was at the stand that morning or not. Miller is the first black woman in Wisconsin to found a kombuchaery and likely one of the first in the country. She founded Soul Brew in 2019 about a year after making her first batch at home. In an interview from 2022 in Milwaukee's alt-weekly(?), Shepherd Express, Miller said "My initial target was Black and brown people, to help them understand how kombucha can help with issues like diabetes and gut health." Miller's targeting of minority communities was a common theme in the articles I found.
In a profile by a local Milwaukee TV station:
She admits kombucha is sometimes a hard sell in the black community.
"With Soul Brew, I am like how can I mix the worlds, make it delicious, make it approachable and try and educate individuals that would never do it... I think I represent the community in a way that they are able to see somebody that looks like them," Miller says.
Hopefully she had made inroads with black and brown communities but I haven't found any articles where this is addressed. Best of luck to her.
The first Soul Brew flavor I sampled, to review, that is, was BLM - Blackberry Lemon Mango.
I think this is also my first review to feature a photo taken with my new phone. Just look at all those extra megapixels!
The tea was light red and a tad hazy. There were plenty of bubbles inside. A sniff caught a strong tanginess with a nebulous fruitiness just behind. I think my nose also sniffed a bit of tea too.
My first sip revealed some hefty fizz followed by a lovely dose of tanginess. The fruit flavor was rather mild initially but grew as the brew warmed. I tasted mostly blackberry and lemon. This stuff had a real zip to it and my tongue was left with tangy bite marks on it. The lemon really came through on the finish.
This was excellent kombucha! If I had a gripe, it would be that it was just a bit overly fizzy. Still, I appreciated that the sweetness was kept in check even as it warmed to cellar temperature. It occurs to me that Miller takes a different approach from NessAlla. Most of the NessAlla brews I sampled had a sweet taste to them even if they didn't have a lot of added sugars. I think this is because they temper the tang and forego a lot of fizz.
Soul Brew, on the other hand, lets the acetic acid flow and offers bubbles aplenty. This kombucha leaned more towards the tangy and so had a better balance of tea and fruit.
Great tea but I've only seen it at the Co-op and they have only three flavors. Maybe these are all that Soul Brew offers in the bowels of winter.
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