Kombucha myths, busted

A brewed kombucha is tart rather than sweet, lightly sparkling, and closer to a dry cider or a sharp lemonade than to a cordial. At Rudy's the fruit goes in after the ferment, at a percentage the certificate prints: pineapple juice 20 per cent in Pineapple & Peach, raspberry juice 12 per cent in Raspberry & Basil, mango puree 6 per cent in Mango & Passion Fruit. As for where the story comes from - fermentation only slows in an unpasteurised can, so a can kept warm for a long time does drift sharper. The storage line on the label is the whole fix.

Sugar is what the culture eats, not what we add. Across the certified flavours the finished drink carries between 0.8 and 2.4 grams of sugars per 100 ml, and EU law only allows the words “low sugars” on a drink at or under 2.5 g per 100 ml - a line every certified flavour sits at or under. For scale, a typical regular cola label reads about 10.6 g per 100 ml. Nothing sweet is added back on top of the fruit: the finish comes from erythritol, xylitol or steviol glycosides, named on the label.

Fermentation always leaves a trace of alcohol - the same order of trace you find in ripe fruit or bread. Rudy's Kombucha stays under 0.5% ABV, which is why the certificates describe it as a naturally fermented non-alcoholic drink and why it sells with no age limit: Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian law draw the line at 1.2 per cent by volume, or 0.5 for beer, and we sit under the stricter of the two. The half that is true is deliberate. Hard Kombucha is fermented on with champagne yeast to 4.5% ABV, says so on the can, and is sold to adults 18 and over only.

It is fermented tea, so every can carries whatever caffeine the tea brought with it - fermentation does not remove it. Two flavours bring more than the rest: Cold Brew Coffee & Orange is built on actual coffee, and Matcha & Passion Fruit is brewed on an infusion of Japanese matcha powder. What you will not find here is a milligram figure, because none of our certificates carries a measured one, and borrowing a generic number for green tea and presenting it as a measurement of our own drink is how a number stops being a fact.

The strands are the culture. Rudy's is unpasteurised, so small pieces of the SCOBY's soft cellulose mat, and some yeast, travel with the liquid and can settle as pale threads or a fine haze. A pasteurised drink never shows them, because its culture was ended by heat; ours was not. One gentle turn of the can mixes them back in, and pouring into a glass does the rest. What is genuinely not normal: a can that bulges, leaks or smells wrong. Pour that one away and write to us with the batch code - the best-before date printed on the can is the batch number.

The can is holding carbon dioxide the ferment made itself, and it comes out of solution the moment the seal breaks - so the calmer the can, the better the pour. If the sediment bothers you, one slow turn of the can is all the mixing it needs. Serving is the same story. The label only asks for storage between +2 and +25 °C, but cold cans hold their sparkle better and foam less on opening, so we chill for a few hours and open cold, upright and slowly. A lively can gets the sink: crack the tab a little, let the pressure ease, then open it fully.

It carries the same word, and the word is doing different work. The standard industrial route to an ambient, shelf-stable ferment is heated after fermenting, filtered bright and sweetened back up - each step legal, and each one taking out something the slow route leaves in. Ours leaves Kuldīga unheated and unfiltered, with the culture still in the can, which is why the label asks for +2 to +25 °C instead of promising a warm shelf. That describes two processes, not any particular producer: the back of whichever can you are holding settles it, and reading it takes half a minute.

The method is the same - sweetened tea, a living culture, time - and people brew good kombucha in kitchen jars. What a jar cannot promise is the same can twice: temperature, time, tea strength and the health of the culture all move the result, week to week. A brewery holds those steady, blends the fruit in afterwards at a measured percentage, and tests every batch before it leaves the building - coliforms, moulds and salmonella all checked, with an ingredients and quality certificate behind each flavour. Brew at home for the craft. Buy the can for the consistency.

Not even our own shelf tastes the same, and it is one brewery. Sweetness alone spans three honest answers, from Lemon & Ginger at 0.8 grams of sugars per 100 ml to Pineapple & Peach at 2.4. One flavour is brewed on coffee, one on matcha, one carries fresh basil and one fireweed tea. That spread is exactly what the taste guide sorts: answer three questions and the shelf filters itself down to the cans that match.

It is a fermented tea drink, and that is the entire claim. The European Union authorises no health claim for kombucha, tea ferments or live cultures - so when a label or a website tells you what kombucha will do for your body, it is making a claim nobody is permitted to make. We publish what is in the drink, per 100 ml, from a certificate the brewery signed, and we stop there. Distrust anyone who does not stop there, us included.