Trying new things can be intimidating—most of us tend to feel varying degrees of trepidation when considering trying a new food or drink. That’s completely normal! And for the sake of this article, we are going to explore what kombucha tastes like, and hopefully quell any hesitations about venturing to try this delicious and healthy beverage. Once you try kombucha, it will likely grow on you with every sip and you’ll be coming back for more ‘booch!

What Does Kombucha Taste Like?

Kombucha tastes slightly sweet, classically tart, and wonderfully bubbly. The taste of kombucha can vary depending on what ingredients are added. Kombucha can take on a floral, spicy, herbaceous, or even fruity notes. Thanks to kombucha’s fermentation process, the friendly bacteria, yeasts, and enzymes (aka probiotics) eat the sugar in sweet tea and turn it into tasty, and slightly bubbly, kombucha. Health-Ade offers a wide variety of different flavors of kombucha that will satisfy nearly every taste possible.

What is Kombucha Made From?

To help understand what kombucha tastes like, let’s look a little deeper at the ingredients and recipe. Kombucha is made from 4 simple ingredients: water, a mix of green and black tea, sugar and a SCOBY, or symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The SCOBY is added to sweet tea, which jumpstarts a two-part process. During primary fermentation, the yeast converts sugar to alcohol under controlled conditions. During secondary fermentation, the bacteria get to work converting most of this alcohol into acetic, gluconic, glucuronic and other organic acids. During both of these processes, the yeast and bacteria feast and multiply, yielding an end beverage that is rich in a variety of microorganisms and healthy acids.

But we’ll cut to the chase as we understand that you’ve been probably wondering what exactly you see floating around in the kombucha. The brown-colored, nebula-like matter that floats at the bottom of the kombucha is just a healthy by-product of the fermentation process—it’s small pieces of the aforementioned SCOBY. Its flavorless and completely safe to consume. Use our store locator tool to find out where to buy kombucha near you.

Does Kombucha Taste Like Alcohol?

Since kombucha goes through a fermentation process, many people wonder if it tastes like alcohol. While the fermentation process does produce a trace amount of alcohol, similar to that of an overripe banana or sauerkraut, by law non-alcoholic beverages must contain less than 0.5% ABV. That means the taste will be much different than that of alcoholic beverages and it is perfectly fine to drink kombucha at any time during the course of your day. Kombucha is a healthy and refreshing drink to try and incorporate into your lifestyle!

Health-Ade produces a variety of kombucha flavors including Tropical Punch, Passion Fruit-Tangerine, Grapefruit, Cherry-Berry, Ginger-Lemon, Pomegranate, Blood Orange-Carrot-Ginger, Grape Vibes, and so many more. Check out our full product offerings by visiting www.health-ade.com today!

Today's blog is written by our very own Daina Trout, MS, MPH

Daina is not just our Co-Founder, she is also a nutritionist that has spent her adult life dedicated to finding and sharing health and wellness through food. With 2 masters' degrees in nutritional biochemistry and public health, Daina has called upon her education often while leading the way at Health-Ade - from how we make every batch of kombucha, to how we talk about gut health to consumers, to even how healthy our employee workplace is! She even writes a few blogs here and there. Happy reading! :)