As drinks go, kombucha is a fairly polarising substance. There are those that love it, can’t get enough of it, and can’t be without it even for a day or two. We (did I just admit to being one of these… ?) can be seen lugging a heavier than usual bag through the airport on a weekend away, laden down by the mighty booch.

But there is another not-very-small group of people out there that think kombucha tastes like rotten fruit, vinegar or any number of vile inedibles (someone told me it tastes like turtle urine – I didn’t ask!) I have many friends in this group that, even when offered a delicious cold brew, curl up their noses in disgust.

So, my hypothesis on this second group is that it’s just the booch they first tried rather than booch in general that has put them off. In which case, it’s probably time to give it another go. There a some great kombucha brands out there now (ahem!) and it’d be a pity to let a few bad brew sour the barrel (if you’ll pardon my mixed metaphors).

That said, it is true that there is a lot of bad booch out there. So, as someone who has spent the last two years guzzling the good stuff, I thought I’d give you a few pointers on what might have gone wrong on your first kombucha experience, and hopefully this will give you the confidence to search out the superb from sinful and, if you have been a doubter in the past, give booch another go.

Bad booch: what went wrong?

In a previous post asking ‘what does kombucha taste like?’ I talked about what makes it taste great. This time, I’m going to focus on what makes kombucha taste bad.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, if you ferment your booch for too long you get a really acid brew. This is what causes that typical ‘booch face. In the US, a typical kombucha might have 10-12 grams of acids per litre. Compare that to a vinegar that might have 50g/L. Now there are many that like this potent brew, but I’m certainly not one of them. We, and most UK brewers, brew to around 6-7g/L which gives a great little bite, but still has a wonderful taste.

Kombucha is, however, a pretty complex brew. Compare it to beer, which has a single yeast, and – brewed poorly – can give you a wide range of spurious off-flavours. Kombucha, by contrast, has a complex blend of usually 2-3 different yeasts and a couple of bacterias all competing for space. If not controlled tightly or brewed with inexperience, from time to time this can lead to smells and flavours of bad egg, nail varnish, medicine, bad breath, rotten cabbage to name but a few (I still can’t get that turtle urine out of my head). And we should know, as in our early brewing experiments we experienced them all.

However, brewed with care and attention, and not a little knowledge of the fine art of fermentation, these bad flavours can be replaced with a plethora of tropical fruits, rose, almond, apricot, vanilla, caramel and pineapple. It isn’t easy to achieve, and it has taken us a good long while to get it right, but it’s definitely something to aspire to.

Of course, it ultimately comes down to the tea, and that is very much a question of personal taste. Often the easier teas to brew with, such as Japanese green sencha teas, can (in our opinion) produce kombuchas that are as dull as dishwater. But to get the best out of characterful and rare fine teas can be rather challenging and can lead to some pretty horrendous tasting results. With perseverance, though, the fabulous flavours that can be achieved are definitely worth the effort.

Ultimately this is why we don’t post-flavour our kombuchas whereas many do. When you are able to produce exquisite flavours of caramel, apple and smoke or citrus, pineapple and herb from just fermenting a brew of fine sweet tea, why would we ever want to mask it? Put simply: we don’t flavour because we don’t have to.

So go on, put away the booch face that puckered you up after your shocking first time. Try a bottle of Real Kombucha. Try a different way of drinking.