Brewing kombucha should always be done with passion, love, care and attention to detail. It’s our belief that this process should never be outsourced to a third party. We have and always will, brew and bottle our kombucha in house to ensure that it is crafted to the highest standards of quality and consistency. For this reason, we’ve invested a great deal in building a state-of-the art kombucha brewery in Oudenaarde, Belgium where we can continue to grow, learn and focus on making the best tasting and highest quality kombucha we possibly can for years to come.
From the brewing to bottling, packaging to laboratory analysis and all the steps in between, our team is able to keep a close eye on quality whilst continuing to develop an even deeper understanding of how to craft the best kombucha possible.
We will take you through the entire brewing process, showing you how we craft our kombucha here at our brewery in Oudenaarde. We brew the same as you would at home, using only tea, water, sugar and a SCOBY, only a bit more controlled, consistent and on a slightly larger scale!
The JARR brewery is nestled along the River Schelde in Oudenaarde, Belgium, on the grounds of one of the most historic beer breweries in the world - Brouwerij Liefmans. We can't think of a better home for our kombucha.
Liefmans' iconic beers have been naturally brewed here using wild bacteria and yeast (just like kombucha) for over 300 years, and they are regarded by aficionados as some of the best sour beers in the world.
In the production of kombucha, water is extremely important, and by volume, it's the most used ingredient in the production process.
We use pure, 3-stage carbon-filtered water, with the perfect degree of mineralisation for kombucha fermentation.
Did you know tea is one of the most ancient and widely consumed beverages in the world? It also contains a host of beneficial properties, including naturally occurring vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Our tea is brewed the same way you would do it at home - just on a slightly larger scale! We steep a couple kilos of our perfectly blended mix of Green and Oolong tea in our 1000 liter stainless steel tea pot for around 15 minutes to create the perfect base for our kombucha.
After having added the perfect amount of our organic Brazilian cane sugar (about 50 g per litre) to the freshly brewed tea, we are now ready to add our SCOBY.
Our own proprietary symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) has been lovingly cultivated and refined since 2015 to create a perfectly balanced booch. It is this SCOBY that truly makes all the magic happen. During fermentation the yeast and bacteria will use the sugar as fuel, to create complex flavour components and beneficial acids.
After around 12 days of carefully controlled fermentation, our kombucha is almost there.
However, it's not quite ready yet!
Now that we’ve finished fermenting our Original kombucha, it’s time to create our Passion Fruit, Ginger and Raspberry flavours. How do we achieve this? Well, it all comes down to the recipe, the quality of the ingredients and the expertise of the brewers.
We use only 100% organic juice and 100% natural flavours in this process, adding them to our pure kombucha in specially designed sterile mixing stations. This allows us to methodically introduce our ingredients in the correct measures until we've reached the perfectly balanced kombucha.
Before we fill our iconic bottles with our freshly made flavoured kombucha, we put it through our bespoke, state-of-the-art, three-stage micro filtration system. This is why our kombucha appears so clear and pure in bottle.
By filtering the bacteria and the yeast from our kombucha we can make sure we obtain a consistent and shelf-stable product, that is 100% safe to drink, 100% alcohol-free and will remain so over time.
But hey, aren't these probiotics good for me?!
We are strong believers in science, transparency and honesty, especially with regards to our kombucha and the information we share with our customers.
In recent years, our team of scientists have thoroughly investigated the health claims of kombucha and have even collaborated with universities in doing research on the subject (read more here).
There is absolutely no academic or scientific proof of any beneficial effect on the human body from probiotics, bacteria, or yeast found in kombucha. Our kombucha still contains beneficial compounds such as acetic acid and antioxidants which remain unaffected by filtration. JARR is also low in sugar, vegan, gluten free and 100% natural and organic.
Yes, even the bottling process is in house!
Our custom bottling line was designed by our in house scientist, Scott Britton, using only top of the range German equipment and technology. This way we can ensure a sterile and safe environment for our bottles to be cleaned, filled and sealed.
The bottles are manually loaded onto the line where they start their automated journey from rinsing, to filling, to capping, through multiple automated camera check-ups, to heath-sealing, to finally being boxed by hand.
Now our kombucha is finally ready for you to enjoy, and who knows, maybe yours will even be delivered by our electric JARR Vespa!
Whether you’re pouring yourself a guilt-free glass after a hard days work, using JARR as an innovative cocktail mixer or enjoying a bottle pre or post workout,
know that we take great pride in brewing it ourselves, for you, with a passion for the product and the craft of kombucha.
We truly hope the love and care we put into our product shows and you enjoy drinking it as much as we have enjoyed brewing it!
Thanks for your support!
Team JARR.
