The art of tart: kombucha tap rooms hit Denver

AURORA | For anyone who’s been forced to drink a cup of someone’s homemade kombucha, it might be hard to imagine spending an evening out with friends downing multiple glasses of the tangy tea. Promises of good stomach health and other benefits are all well and good, but if it requires suffering through what at its best can be described as an unpleasant culinary experience, why would anyone make it the focal point of a night out?

But modern kombucha brewers have taken the probiotic-filled drink from its hippy roots and have done something amazing: they’ve made it taste really good. And across the metro area, kombucha tap rooms are opening up to help grow the thriving culture around the ancient drink.

“When we launched our product, people would tell us that we were doing it wrong,” said Jamba Dunn, owner of Rowdy Mermaid Kombucha in Boulder. “This tastes good. It’s supposed to be sour. And we’d say no, that’s not how it’s actually supposed to be. It can taste good.”

Rowdy Mermaid opened up in 2013 and by 2014 the company decided to open a tasting room. Dunn said the goal of the tasting room in part was to help create an entry way for people who either had never heard of the drink or whose one experience with it left a bad taste in their mouth.

And Dunn’s business isn’t alone. Across the area, taprooms focused specifically on kombucha are opening up and coffee shops and beer tap rooms are starting to dedicate at least one tap to a keg of kombucha as well.

“People have had more time to perfect (brewing kombucha) and get it dialed in for what people are really wanting. And that’s what you’re seeing in the kombucha market, a product that people are really enjoying,” said Marc Gaudreault, owner of Lone Tree TruBucha.

Kombucha’s origins are believed to go back to around 400 A.D. in Japan. The drink is made by brewing a tea with some form of sugar in it and then allowing it to ferment with a SCOBY, the acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, for multiple days. The resulting drink is full of good bacteria but often is accompanied by a pungent taste and smell.

That unpleasant quality kept kombucha relegated to small health food stores and the garages of health nuts that made the fermented drink for its purported benefits. But Dunn said as shoppers have become more conscious of what they’re consuming, the desire for a drink that can taste good while also being good for you has helped drive the interest in the ancient beverage.

“The rise in popularity of kombucha is in a lot of ways directly tied to rise of Whole Foods and growth of the conscious market,” Dunn said.

Gaudreault said taprooms are a perfect place for his and other kombucha brewers to introduce people to a beverage that they’ve either never heard of or have had a bad experience with in the past. And Dunn sees kombucha taprooms as a way to give people who want a night out with their friends a way to do that without having to pair it with alcohol.

The market for kombucha is in the midst of a serious expansion. According to a 2017 report by Zion Market Research, the global market for kombucha is expected to grow by about 25 percent annually with sales reaching  $2,457 billion by 2022. While there’s a shift in comuses looking for healthy options, what has helped to drive the market is the development of kombucha that tastes great.

But even as the market grows, Dunn and Gaudreault both said the vast majority of people don’t know or understand what kombucha is. Which is why they see taprooms as the perfect tool to cultivate a healthy drinking culture.