Beer and Kombucha: Kombeercha

As this interview states... "There's a lot of similarity between kombucha tea and beer. Fundamentally, as brewers, our job is to provide a suitable home for our yeast. We make sure the temperature is right, everything is clean, there's both the right type and quantity of food available and there aren't any waste products building up."

Due to this similarity some adventurous beer brewers have included kombucha as an ingredient in their beer. 

For example, this Lambrucha combines a lambic beer with an organic green tea Kombucha.

This Mava Roka sounds amazing! It's a Maple Vanilla Rooibos Kombucha ale which begins as vanilla roobios kombucha brewed in oak casks. Maple syrup is added at the second fermentation. All of the Kombucha brews at BeyondKombucha.com sound amazing!
 

 Commercial Kombucha brewed with beer is excellent but in the spirit of experimentation... try it yourself!!

This post on a homebrewing forum seems like it would result in some interesting things! 

 "Just bottled some kombucha today. I have been thinking about trying it to sour beer. I was going to use it to sour a small unhopped portion of wort, achieve nice sourness, halt the bacteria by either boiling or campden tablets. Then add that back to the main batch." 

This post on Flander's Red Beer is very interesting. 


If beer brewers can co-opt the principles of kombucha brewing us kombucha brewers can co-op their techniques and strategies as well!

This two part series on making malt kombucha is basic but very interesting. 

 

(Part One)

 

  (Part Two)

It's easy to flavor kombucha with hops in the secondary ferment. I used 2 tablespoons of hops for a 500 mL bottle which resulted in a pleasant lightly hopped flavor. Check out my posts on flavoring kombucha with hops here and the tasting notes here. 

I couldn't end this post without mentioning my previous experiment with kombucha wine! 

   Kombucha Wine

 
If all that experimentation simply sounds like too much work. Try mixing kombucha and beer as this blogger did.

 Her description (found here) of this beverage is beautiful! 

"[Mixing Kombucha and beer is] an especially good way to use kombucha that has fermented too long and gotten too sour. The malty body of the beer cuts the sourness of the kombucha. By the same token, it’s a great way to add something extra to a can of cheap beer left over after a party."

Would you ever mix the brewing techniques of beer and kombucha?

If you liked the experimental nature of this post you'll love my free kombucha brewing course!  

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