Kombucha & Probiotics: Crafting Healthy Kombucha Drinks

What Is Kombucha?

Believed to have originated in China over 2,000 years ago, kombucha is traditionally a fermented tea drink. This trendy probiotic drink, kombucha, is characterized by its low-calorie content and potential benefits to overall health. With health-conscious consumers seeking the best quality drinks on the market, advertisers are marketing kombucha tea as a drink with health benefits.

Meanwhile, social media influencers who promote kombucha spark a desire among their followers for the effervescent elixir. Over time, kombucha has remained top of mind as a wellness beverage offering many advantages. As the popularity of this fizzy probiotic beverage increases among the wellness community, the kombucha drink market is predicted to reach nearly 9.7 billion dollars by 2030.

What Is Kombucha Made Of?

The basic ingredients that comprise the tangy, probiotic kombucha beverages are tea, sugar, bacteria, and yeast. There are many kombucha drink recipes which call for black, green, or herbal teas. At Newport Bottling & Canning, our flavor chemists are experts at creating delicious kombucha beverage formulas.

The process starts with dissolving the sugar in boiling water and then steeping the tea leaves in the sugar water. Once the tea has steeped for the desired amount of time, they add the yeast. This mixture is set aside for at least a week or more – some beverage manufacturers leave it for almost two weeks. In this time, the process of fermentation begins, allowing bacteria to grow and acids to form, creating a small amount of alcohol, often less than 0.5%. The fermentation process is what gives kombucha its carbonation.

A thin film will form on the top of the kombucha liquid mixture, often referred to as the SCOBY, which is the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Usually, a bit of the SCOBY will be saved to create future batches of kombucha.

Formulating & Packaging Kombucha Drinks

Kombucha packaging commonly uses clear plastic or glass bottles or aluminum cans as containers for the fizzy drinks. Probiotic kombucha drinks can be recognized for their cloudy appearance, and are often light or dark brown, but sometimes can appear green.

Traditionally, kombucha has a vinegar-like taste, but many beverage companies are adding flavorings to this fermented cold tea. Our flavor experts can help you develop a custom-flavored kombucha drink. You can add berry or citrus fruits to kombucha beverages for a sweet yet tart flavor profile. Some companies choose to flavor the beverage elixir with herbs and spices like ginger, lavender, or mint to enhance the flavor profile of their kombucha drinks. Whatever your palate craves, we can formulate a unique kombucha beverage that makes your innovative drink idea a reality.

At Newport Bottling & Canning, our flavor experts have over 40 years of experience developing beverages with natural and organic flavorings. By partnering with our flavor house, Nature’s Flavors, we have an abundance of flavorings available at your disposal. Best of all, your kombucha drinks can be created from start to finish under one roof at our facility in Orange, California. 

We have kombucha bottling and canning lines for fermented tea production of all sizes. Our flavor scientists have experience concocting kombucha safely, and this is important as these beverages contain live bacteria. The active bacteria in the kombucha works as a probiotic, which has many advantages.

Benefits of Kombucha Probiotics

Fermented kombucha drinks are brimming with probiotics and antioxidants, which provide your body with the essential bacteria that helps you maintain a healthy gut. This healthy bacteria can positively affect your digestion and immune system, relieve inflammation, and help kick-start weight loss. These health claims around kombucha appeal to many health-conscious consumers.

Other potential kombucha health benefits may include alleviating diarrhea as well as constipation, providing your body with an energy boost due to the caffeine in the kombucha tea, removing toxins from your body, preventing cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol. Kombucha naturally contains probiotics, vitamins (especially vitamin B), minerals, and organic acids. However, it’s important to recognize that there is no substantial scientific evidence regarding any of these health claims or kombucha benefits.

While many of these kombucha health benefits may not have scientific studies associated with them, many types of teas are associated with beneficial properties. Since kombucha is made with tea, the consumer may receive some of those benefits when they consume the fermented beverage.

The probiotic bacteria cultures found in kombucha make this beverage extremely popular, giving consumers a way to up their intake of healthy probiotics.

Since probiotic kombucha drinks contain live bacteria, it’s essential that they are made safely and properly before consumption. Our beverage experts know the ins and outs of making, canning, and bottling kombucha properly. At Newport Bottling & Canning, we have quality control technicians who make sure the kombucha formula is safe to drink before the beverage makes its way to the bottling and canning line. We know that proper beverage handling and packaging is key to creating a quality beverage. 

It’s important to note that people who are at risk for food-borne illnesses and those who are pregnant shouldn’t consume kombucha since it contains raw bacteria.

Create Your Own Kombucha Probiotic Beverages

Bring your kombucha beverage ideas to our team, and we’ll help you formulate the next great flavored kombucha drink. Our team provides copacking services that range from beverage formulation, research and development, and beverage consulting to bottling and canning drinks so that they are ready for commercial distribution. Our team of quality control technicians ensures that everything is sanitary on the beverage production lines as they go through the process of bottling or canning kombucha. 

This timeless tradition of drinking kombucha tea spans several centuries and hasn’t lost its appeal over time. With its increasing popularity as a healthy lifestyle drink with probiotic health benefits and innovative flavors, you’re sure to find ready-to-drink kombucha beverages on store shelves and in your favorite coffee shops. Start your journey to create the next best-flavored probiotic kombucha drink with our team of beverage experts.