is rené's Kombucha pasteurised?

No. Our Kombucha is small batch brewed, just like it was when we started. By now we are using 60 litre barrels and not 2 litre glass jars. It is mechanically filtered during bottling. That's all. No second fermentation, no heat treatment, no carbon dioxide (fizz) added.

the last bottle i bought had no fizz at all. is it still good?

Yes. It was highly likely just bottled that week. As we do not carbonate our Kombucha - our grandmothers would not have either - there is no immediate fizz in the bottles. It develops over time. Give it another few days on your kitchen counter and it will be happily fizzing.

the last bottle i bought had a lot of fizz. how can i open it without spilling it all?

Place a clean water glass in your kitchen sink. Hold your bottle horizontally with the lid right above the glass. Now slowly and carefully unscrew the lid. Stop once foam begins oozing out. Catch it in your glass. Proceed in this fashion until enough pressure has been released from your bottle that you can tilt it back up, open the lid completely and start pouring your Champagne-like Kombucha. Skål!

Does your Kombucha contain alcohol?

Yes it does, and no it's not an alcoholic beverage, at least not in terms of the legal framework here in New Zealand. Our legislation considers beverages with up to 1.15%VOL non-alcoholic. For Kombucha brewers this means: limited shelf life. To stay inside the legal limit, our Best Before date is set to 10 weeks from bottling. At that time we still have a good margin to the legal alcohol limit.

Why is your best before date only 10 weeks from bottling?

This is because of the live nature of our Kombucha. It has the complete pro-biotic profile from fermentation to consumption. We are not filtering out the yeasts that are part of the symbiotic Kombucha culture, as some other manufacturers do. Those yeasts, have the habit of turning sugar into carbon dioxide (fizz) and alcohol. We want the former, yet are limited with the latter.

So if you see a Kombucha bottle on a shelf at a store that has several months (4-8) of shelf life, you can safely assume that the content of that bottle has undergone one or the other treatment to either filter out or kill the beneficial yeasts that were part of the pro-biotic profile during the fermentation process. It will also, highly likely, contain artificial carbon dioxide.

Our Kombucha has all the good bugs - alive and well!