The Basics
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Kombucha is a refreshing fermented tea beverage made using a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria & yeast). The beverage is known for its many health benefits and has become popular as a natural soft drink alternative.
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Put simply it’s alcoholic kombucha. Ours is fermented rather than pre-mixed with a spirit and infused with fresh herbs and botanicals. A simple idea with a tasty outcome.
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Think crisp, aromatic and refreshing. It’s lighter than beer, easier to understand than wine, not as sweet as those sickly ciders and has whole lot more flavour than those plain tasting seltzers. It goes down easy and enjoyably.
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Serve fresh, chilled, straight from the can or on ice in your favourite crystal glass. If you’re feeling adventurous you might like to try mixing it in a cocktail — we did and it was good!
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Ventura Hard Kombucha is available online here and at select local stockists. We ship Australia wide.
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Ventura Brewing was recently voted ‘Australia’s Best Hard Kombucha’ by Drink Easy Awards. Our mix variety packs are always popular and hard to beat with a few cans of each flavour for you to try.
The Process
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Ventura hard kombucha is made using our unique double fermentation. First we brew a kombucha base using a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria & yeast). The secondary ferment is where the alcohol is fermented into it just like wine or beer. We then add a mix of different herbs, fruits and botanicals for the flavour and package it up ready for your enjoyment.
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Pure water, premium organic tea, sugar, starter culture, fresh herbs, fruits and botanicals, thats it. Only real ingredients with no artificial preservatives, flavours or sweeteners.
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Yes kombucha starts out as a sweetened tea brew, but don’t worry the sugar is metabolised by the yeast during the fermention process, which means it ends up nice and dry by the end of the brew cycle.
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Brewed not blended. We like to do things the proper way here at Ventura, which normally means the slow, hard, expensive way. Rather than just pre-mixing with spirits or back-filling with wine, to raise our alcohol levels we do a secondary fermentation using a specific brewing yeast. This takes around 2 weeks and raises the alcohol levels up to 5%. Overall giving it a more complete, integrated and balanced flavour profile than other methods.
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Our kombucha is shelf stable out of the fridge for 1 month but due to the unprocessed nature of the drink it’s always best kept cold for optimum taste and freshness.
Health & Nutrition
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Kombucha is part of the ‘better for you’ beverage movement spreading through aisles of late and is known for containing a range of beneficial probiotics, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and acids.
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We only use top quality, premium ingredients, locally sourced where possible. Our batches are currently produced using 70% organic ingredients with plans to be 100% and certified in the near future. One non-organic ingredient we use is sugar, as you can’t get Australian grown organic sugar. Since we are in a sugarcane region (the brewery literally looks over cane fields) we decided it was more important to use local rather than organic in this case.
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Yes, our hard kombucha is low sugar.
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Yes, our hard kombucha is low carb.
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Yes, our hard kombucha is low calorie.
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Yes, no animal or dairy products are used in the making of Ventura. We occasionally use local honey in some of our specialty brews.
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Yes. We do not use any ingredients that contain gluten.
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While we aren’t legally allowed to make any claims about health benefits of an alcoholic beverage, and that makes total sense as alcohol is inherently a toxin, we like to think of our kombucha as a clean, light alternative to beer, wine and cider. For the conscious consumer it’s reassuring to know our hard kombucha is made from all natural ingredients, is low carb, low sugar, gluten free and preservative free, while also still containing all the beneficial vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and acids of regular kombucha. Perhaps you would like to try a night out on hard kombucha and see how you feel the next morning?
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All of our kombucha’s are fermented using live cultures known to create a range of healthy probiotic bacteria.
Sustainability
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Aluminium cans are far superior to glass bottles for numerous reasons. Firstly they are infintely recyclable, just think about that for a second! And due to high material value of cans, they are actually profitable to recycle and help pay for the recycling of cheap unprofitable materials like plastic and glass. Also by packing more product into the same trucks, canned packaging lowers carbon emission and they can be taken on the go with less risk of breakage.
A side from the enviromental benefits, from a preservation and quality standpoint, cans protect kombucha from penetrating light and oxygen better than glass which keeps it fresher and tastier, for longer. Cheers to that.
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We sure do, The Northern Rivers is known for having an abundance of quality produce which we are proud to use wherever we can.
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Over 90% of our packaging is recyclable including aluminmum cans, glass bottles and cardboard boxes. Our 4 & 6 pack holders are made from recycled plastics and we also now use printed cans to reduce plastic labels.
Our cans are registered in the Exchange For Change program which encourages customers to recycle by allowing you to collect 10c back from every can at the local depot.
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Yes, all of our waste water is collected and then re-used on local farms. We also limit the use of harsh chemicals using bio-degradable options where possible.
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Since we started, sustainability has been a strong focus for us and something we are deeply committed to. While far from perfect, we always try to make the best possible decisions available to us. Whether its our packaging, waste water or energy consumption, we do what we can each day to lessen our impact on this amazing planet – after all, this is the only planet with hard kombucha!
Didn’t find what you are looking for? For any unanswered questions just reach out to the team at hello@venturabrewing.co and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.