FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
WHAT IS KOMBUCHA? WHAT IS JUN?
Kombucha is a beverage made from sweetened tea and a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of yeasts and bacteria). The yeasts and bacteria act in tandem to create a hostile environment for any other microbial life and to create a tangy, complex beverage for us. This process has been refined with mutual evolution for millenia, and it is a time-tested method of food preservation.
Kombucha is the common term for a beverage made in this manner, and Jun is a dinstinction given to a ferment that is sweetened with honey rather than sugar.
IS WHAT YOU MAKE KOMBUCHA?
Great question! Sometimes we’re not sure anymore. The fermentation we use is kombucha fermentation, but we have a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of blending, aging, and achieving clarity in our products that can make it seem like more of a relative of kombucha than the kombucha on store shelves. We wear all of our labels loosley: and “kombucha” is no different.
WHY DOES THE TEA MATTER?
Kombucha uses tea (camelia sinensis) as an essential aspect of its chemistry; the polyphenols, catechins, tannins, caffeine, and subtle sugars in the brewed tea are utilized all across the spectrum of the ferment. It stands to reason, then, when you use high-quality tea leaves produced by artisans who spend their working lives inflecting the tea into different styles and expressions that the end result would be decidedly different.
WHAT ARE THE INGREDIENTS
Tea leaves, water, sweetener (honey or sugar), and aged, matured kombucha to serve as a starter.
IS IT INCREDIBLY HEALTHY?
While there are ongoing studies that generally conclude fermented foods of all classifications have a generally positive effect on human health... we don’t really care that much. Honestly, we got into this for flavor - not as a dietetic exercise. There’s a lot of literature on probiotics and their benefits that float around on the web (and we recommend reading some of them), but we avoid a bit of the herding around fermented food hype. As legendary fermented food enthusiast Sandor Katz declared in his 2012 masterpiece The Art of Fermentation, “Kombucha is neither panacea nore peril. Like any ferment, it contains unique metabolic byproducts and living bacterial cultures that may or may not agree with you.”
HOW MUCH SUGAR IS IN IT?
How we measure our products doesn’t give us lab-accurate nutritional information, but our metrics tell us that a standard 150mL of our product will have about 7.5 grams of sugar per serving which would be 30 calories per glass.
IS IT COMPLETELY ALCOHOL FREE?
As per the USDA, an acohol-free beverage must contain no more than 0.5% ABV to qualify as non-alcoholic beverage. Our recipes have been verified to produce well under that legal limit and are non-alcoholic. Sometimes it seems weird that ANY alcohol is allowed in non-alcoholic drinks, but trace amounts of alcohol are a common feature of fermentation. For context, if you wanted to ingest enough of our product to consume the same amount of ethanol in a 12oz bottle of budweiser, then you would have to consume more than five 750mL bottles of our product in an hour. Even we can’t do that, haha.
WHY DOES IT TAKE A WEEK TO SHIP?
We’re a 2 person operation (currently) who brew, bottle, label, and sell every bottle that leaves our doors. We also service a lot of restaurants who we love as well, so sometimes orders may be delayed. Check out our terms and conditions page to hear the same thing said in a different way, but know its just so we can get the best bottle to you.
Kombucha is a beverage made from sweetened tea and a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of yeasts and bacteria). The yeasts and bacteria act in tandem to create a hostile environment for any other microbial life and to create a tangy, complex beverage for us. This process has been refined with mutual evolution for millenia, and it is a time-tested method of food preservation.
Kombucha is the common term for a beverage made in this manner, and Jun is a dinstinction given to a ferment that is sweetened with honey rather than sugar.
IS WHAT YOU MAKE KOMBUCHA?
Great question! Sometimes we’re not sure anymore. The fermentation we use is kombucha fermentation, but we have a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of blending, aging, and achieving clarity in our products that can make it seem like more of a relative of kombucha than the kombucha on store shelves. We wear all of our labels loosley: and “kombucha” is no different.
WHY DOES THE TEA MATTER?
Kombucha uses tea (camelia sinensis) as an essential aspect of its chemistry; the polyphenols, catechins, tannins, caffeine, and subtle sugars in the brewed tea are utilized all across the spectrum of the ferment. It stands to reason, then, when you use high-quality tea leaves produced by artisans who spend their working lives inflecting the tea into different styles and expressions that the end result would be decidedly different.
WHAT ARE THE INGREDIENTS
Tea leaves, water, sweetener (honey or sugar), and aged, matured kombucha to serve as a starter.
IS IT INCREDIBLY HEALTHY?
While there are ongoing studies that generally conclude fermented foods of all classifications have a generally positive effect on human health... we don’t really care that much. Honestly, we got into this for flavor - not as a dietetic exercise. There’s a lot of literature on probiotics and their benefits that float around on the web (and we recommend reading some of them), but we avoid a bit of the herding around fermented food hype. As legendary fermented food enthusiast Sandor Katz declared in his 2012 masterpiece The Art of Fermentation, “Kombucha is neither panacea nore peril. Like any ferment, it contains unique metabolic byproducts and living bacterial cultures that may or may not agree with you.”
HOW MUCH SUGAR IS IN IT?
How we measure our products doesn’t give us lab-accurate nutritional information, but our metrics tell us that a standard 150mL of our product will have about 7.5 grams of sugar per serving which would be 30 calories per glass.
IS IT COMPLETELY ALCOHOL FREE?
As per the USDA, an acohol-free beverage must contain no more than 0.5% ABV to qualify as non-alcoholic beverage. Our recipes have been verified to produce well under that legal limit and are non-alcoholic. Sometimes it seems weird that ANY alcohol is allowed in non-alcoholic drinks, but trace amounts of alcohol are a common feature of fermentation. For context, if you wanted to ingest enough of our product to consume the same amount of ethanol in a 12oz bottle of budweiser, then you would have to consume more than five 750mL bottles of our product in an hour. Even we can’t do that, haha.
WHY DOES IT TAKE A WEEK TO SHIP?
We’re a 2 person operation (currently) who brew, bottle, label, and sell every bottle that leaves our doors. We also service a lot of restaurants who we love as well, so sometimes orders may be delayed. Check out our terms and conditions page to hear the same thing said in a different way, but know its just so we can get the best bottle to you.
For any other questions, shoot us an email at info@unifiedferments.com