Pretty in pink: Organic Hibiscus Berry Kombucha by Forage

It has taken a while to make this review a reality. I bought and drank several cans of this stuff before actually taking tasting notes during consummation. Thirst would overtake me so I would pop open a can and dispense with my thirst without pen & paper figuring I'd buy another one on my next visit to the grocery store and that I'd review that one. Eventually I put paid to this vicious circle.

The Forage website no longer lists this hibiscus berry stuff. Did tariffs make the acquisition of tropical hibiscus financially untenable? Or perhaps this brew is available only during the colder months? Maybe the brewer just wanted to try their hand at different flavors.

Even if you don't care for the taste of hibiscus, you've got to admit that the reddish pink hue it gives to drinks is sure pretty. The color is provided by a chemical called anthocyanin which, if related to cyanide, is hopefully a benign cousin. This stuff was hazy with the trademark reddish pink. My pour did not produce any head so I figured this would be a fizz-light experience.

The aroma was fruity and floral. I hate to be generic but I am not able to distinguish the floral scents of hibiscus from those of rosehip, another ingredient. As for the fruitiness, it was berry-like but currants and apples come before elderberries and natural blueberry flavor on the ingredients list which also boasts essential orange oil and natural mango flavor further down. On one sniff I thought I caught the blueberry and orange but that may have been purely psychological and merely the result of reading the ingredient list.

Kombucha is tea and so has a light body. Fizziness was mild as expected. The taste was fruity and floral, if you can believe it. There are various fruits and fruit flavorings at play here so there was a fruit punch thing to be had. I think the orange came through as the kombucha warmed. I thoroughly enjoyed the floral flavor and the tartness that hibiscus and rosehip bring as it helped balance the sweetness which was perhaps a bit more than I prefer. It wasn't cloying, mind you.

I really enjoyed this stuff and it reminded me just how tasty hibiscus is. The earliest instance I can recall tasting it goes back to 2011 when Robyn Klinge devised and brewed (or co-brewed) a hibiscus saison that was quite novel to me and very tasty to boot. More recently, I was in Milwaukee and made a stop at Anodyne Coffee where Colombia Rodrigo Sánchez was on tap. The tasting notes mentioned hibiscus - a first in coffee, for me - and it did indeed have a hibiscusy taste.

This brew should satisfy your heartiest cravings for floral tea goodness.

It took me several visits but...

...I eventually noticed that Haight's Mobile Maintenance is housed in a pair of Trachte buildings.

I think there's a small shed in back too but a fence obscured most of it.

Farm ruins, Fitchburg, WI

I noticed these a year or 2 ago despite having driven by them for decades and finally went to take a look yesterday.

After wandering the old foundations closest to the road, I looked around and saw something on a hill. It proved to be another ruin.

Coming Soon: 23 March @ AMC Fitchburg

My second senior discount in a row!

Trailers for The Assessment. Things began with a commercial for the Metropolitan Opera which was followed by a commercial for another Christian feature, Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality. This one is a documentary about a kid who died young and, according to Wikipedia, became canonized as the patron of  online influencers. Good lord.

 

Nice to see a trailer for David Cronenberg's latest, though I have a ticket for it at the Wisconsin Film Festival. The Penguin Lessons looks cute.

Coming Soon: 22 March @ AMC Fitchburg

Trailers at a screening of Ash. These followed a commercial for The Chosen: Last Supper and one for the Metropolitan Opera. Why do these Christian movies get commercials instead of trailers? Did the distributor pay to get their commercial shown? Do theaters get paid to run these movies or do they choose to screen them like other, secular/profane ones?

Summer approaches so now cometh the slasher flicks. While I had read some good words about Freaky Tales the trailer left me wholly unenthusiastic. Two red band trailers. They used to be as rare as hen's teeth and now they're not uncommon.

Foraging in Fitchburg: Blackberry Grape Kombucha by Forage Kombucha

Having sampled all of the Soul Brews available to me, I looked once again to Madison for more kombucha to taste and blather on about. I had intended to dig into the brews of Rude Brew Kombucha but they were no longer on the shelves at the Willy Street Coop or, at least the one on the north side. I would swear I've seen their teas there in the past couple months but there wasn't even an empty bit of shelf space with a sticker giving the prices of the absent brews. Their website is gone as the domain has expired. Does it still exist?

And so I perused the shelves in search of another local kombucha and came upon the teas of Forage which is brewed by our neighbors to the south in Fitchburg, a suburb of Madison.

Forage puts their teas into lovely, colorful cans and taking one from the shelf and laying it in my basket made me feel like I was going to abscond with a bit of summer, as if one can put sunny skies, sweltering heat, and road construction into a can.

I went with their Blackberry Grape for no particular reason. I suspect that it was at either side of the shelf and I decided to start at that end and make my way to the other.

The tea was a hazy light purple. Its aroma smelled tangy sour, at first, and then my nose was greeted by blackberry followed by something I can only characterize as an indistinct fruitiness. I smelled fruit but I couldn't really discern which ones. Finally there was a tad of the floral. Certainly not a bad start.

Taking a sip, I found it had some really nice fizz to it with a light body and not much sweetness. A firm tang was accompanied by a herbal tea taste, a mellow fruitiness, and another tad of the floral. Normally I don't look at the ingredients list until I am done sampling but there are times when I look at it mid-tasting. Such was the case here.

I was not surprised to see hibiscus near the top of the list. So that's where that floral taste comes from. I was, however, surprised to see red wine grape skins & blackberry flavor towards the bottom as well as the fact that genuine blackberries were absent. (Same with lychee - "flavor" only.) Closer to the front of the line were currants, schisandra, and guayusa. What the heck are schisandra, and guayusa?

Schisandra is a climbing vine that Wikipedia says is native to North America and I presume its fruit was used here. Guayusa, on the other hand, is an Amazonian holly tree whose leaves are used to prepare a tea.

The finish was fairly dry in a tanniny way and I was able to taste the lychee flavor. I also tasted herbal tea and a hint of hibiscus in addition to a general fruitiness that lingered.

With all the fruits and the flavors, the two types of tea (black and green), and those exotic berries & leaves, I was rather surprised that everything seemed to be in balance. There wasn't really any single flavor that stood out; instead it made for a nice gestalt. It was also not particularly sweet, which I really appreciated. The fizz was the perfect amount, there was a very nice tanginess to it, and this brew had a tasty fruity-botanical combination. Oh, and there was no SCOBY.

My gripe is, that for a drink that is touted as organic and probiotic, whose maker always uses "pure ingredients", and, in general, is touted as natural and healthy, the use of blackberry flavor and lychee flavor is disappointing. I much prefer that real fruit be used. (Do these flavorings come from Amoretti?) I find is disingenuous to put blackberries on your label when you only use blackberry flavor.

Trachte Buildings - Fitchburg II

Trachte Buildings - Fitchburg

I ran across this pair of Trachte buildings on my way to photograph other Trachte buildings just down the road.