Narrator: This slimy glob of yeast and bacteria
ferments to make kombucha.
And where there's fermentation, there's alcohol.
Anywhere from 1% to 3% alcohol by volume
can occur naturally in raw kombucha.
That's less than a light beer.
You would be in the bathroom having a mini cleanse
before you could actually end up intoxicated.
They'd have to drink 10 bottles.
Narrator: But US law requires ABV never go over 0.5%
for kombucha to be sold as a soft drink.
If they do go over, producers could face tax penalties
or risk getting their bottles pulled from shelves,
which has happened before.
So producers have two choices: Get an alcohol license
to ferment kombucha naturally, or redo the entire product
so it doesn't create as much alcohol,
which is what GT Dave,
kombucha's first billionaire, did.
Either way, dealing with the boozy by-product
is expensive and complicated,
and some say it may eliminate
what makes kombucha a healthy drink.
This congressman is trying to pass an act
that would raise the legal limit of alcohol
for just kombucha to 1.25%. But can it pass?
We went to Oregon for a deeper look
at how one brewer works within these regulations
to produce over 30 million bottles a year.
Here at Brew Dr. in Portland, Oregon,
the kombucha starts with three main ingredients:
water, tea, and sugar.
It's the same three ingredients that have made up the drink
since its likely creation
in China thousands of years ago.
In Japan, it was made with seaweed,
hence its name.
These days,
brewers start the tea with botanicals
like rose, mint, and lavender.
It's fun with these botanicals
to think about the giant fields they come from.
Narrator: A single batch of kombucha
needs about 85 pounds of tea to get it going.
That'll make 66,000 bottles.
In here, what we do is we bring in hot water.
Narrator: Then they add sugar.
Matt: So essentially, what we're doing here
is making a big pot of sweet tea
that will then get fermented into kombucha.
Narrator: Steeping takes around 40 minutes.
Then it's pumped through this waterfall filter.
Matt: And all the organic material comes out.
And so we partner with our local municipalities to compost.
Narrator: To ready the vat for the next batch of tea,
this guy crawls in to clean it out.
And that already-brewed sweet tea
heads to tanks in the fermentation room,
where the tea first starts to produce alcohol.
At half a million gallons total,
all the liquid in here
would almost fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.
The room is kept at a steamy 82 degrees Fahrenheit,
and it smells kind of sour.
Matt: And that seems to be where
our kombucha fermentation is happiest.
So we add the sweet tea
into the tank where there's already a SCOBY.
Narrator: A SCOBY is a symbiotic culture
of bacteria and yeast.
Essentially, it's a living organism
that kick-starts the fermentation process.
Gregg: As the kombucha is fermenting, the SCOBY forms in layers.
Eventually, you'll just have layer upon layer
upon layer upon layer.
Narrator: It's this guy's job to pop CO2 bubbles
that form at the top of the tank.
The SCOBY's bacteria eats up the sugar
and creates carbon dioxide,
which makes kombucha bubbly, and alcohol.
As long as it has sugar to feed on,
a SCOBY can grow to epic proportions.
Matt: If this tank were as wide as a swimming pool,
it would create a SCOBY the width of a swimming pool.
This batch has been fermenting for just over three weeks.
Narrator: At this point, Brew Dr.'s kombucha
has about 3% alcohol by volume.
Compare that to a light beer, which sits at 4.2 ABV.
Matt: Dude, it's so good with alcohol in it.
Cheers.
Narrator: Every fermented food, from yogurt to kimchi,
has trace amounts of alcohol.
You can't feed yeast sugar and not create ethanol.
That's natural.
Narrator: Brew Dr. pays annually for a distillery license.
But because Brew Dr. sells its kombucha
as a soft drink,
the team has to remove most of the natural alcohol,
bringing it from 3% to under the legal limit of 0.5%.
They use this machine common in the wine industry.
This column is heated slowly at low temperatures.
Cones spin inside to spread out the liquid.
A cool vapor evaporates,
carrying the small alcohol molecules with it.
Matt: It's a very elegant, mechanical way of taking ethanol
out of a liquid without affecting the nature of the liquid.
Narrator: That fancy machine cost Matt a million dollars.
But now we're responsibly selling a nonalcoholic product
to our consumers.
Narrator: Testing is also required by law,
but it's another complicated
and expensive step in the process.
This alcohol testing machine can cost up to $40,000.
Each bottle gets a label warning
of the trace amounts of alcohol.
At this point, the alcohol is well under the 0.5% limit.
Next, it's packed and shipped.
But kombucha will continue fermenting once it leaves here.
And if it's stored improperly at a grocery store ...
GT Dave: Alcohol that's naturally present due to the fermentation
would continue to increase.
If you drink spoiled milk,
is that something you take up with the producers?
Is it something you take up with the store?
So there's a couple of questions there
in terms of who really is liable at that point.
Narrator: The current law says producers are to blame
if ABV ever goes over 0.5%
before it winds up in a customer's fridge —
which is exactly what happened in 2010.
At the time, there weren't a lot of eyes
on the fledgling kombucha industry.
But then a bottle of kombucha
in a Maine Whole Foods started bubbling.
State authorities tested it for alcohol
and found it to be 2.5% ABV, way above the legal limit.
It still wasn't enough to get an adult buzzed,
but that bubbling bottle upended the industry.
Everybody kind of found out about alcohol in kombucha.
Narrator: Whole Foods dropped all kombucha
from their shelves.
Virtually every kombucha maker in the entire country
was asked to temporarily cease production.
Kombucha was going up,
it got pulled off the shelf,
it dropped like this, and it just created this sort of wound
that we've been trying to heal from ever since.
Narrator: Brands scrambled
to get their kombucha under compliance.
Some brands just didn't come back.
Narrator: Honest Tea and Vibranz
stopped producing kombucha altogether.
GT: It was close to catastrophic.
Being off the shelf for three months
can almost kill any brand.
Narrator: Others, like Brew Dr., dropped a lot of money
on alcohol removal machines.
Others use kombucha from concentrate
and dilute it with water or juice.
Some brands chose to pasteurize.
Narrator: But some argue removing the alcohol
can also erase some of the drink's health benefits.
They would also remove the organic acids
and the beneficial microorganisms
that make kombucha probiotic.
Narrator: To keep his drink raw but still compliant ...
GT: We took the original recipe,
and we got it licensed as an alcoholic beverage.
Narrator: Then GT created a whole new recipe.
GT: We modified the temperature
that we fermented the kombucha,
the length of time that we fermented the kombucha.
Narrator: So the alcohol content was lower.
The 0.5% ABV rule is from a Prohibition-era tax code.
So what we're dealing with is an antiquated law
that isn't based in the laws of nature.
If a product is at 0.4% versus 0.6%,
that's not the difference
between you getting drunk or intoxicated.
It's really just a legal technicality.
Narrator: The companies that made it work
despite the regulations have thrived
in an industry that has bounced back.
GT became kombucha's first billionaire.
We have over 50% of the market share.
Narrator: But producers and government leaders
are pushing back on 0.5%.
In 2021, Congressman Earl Blumenauer from Oregon
introduced the KOMBUCHA Act to Congress.
Its goal? To increase the alcohol limit
for only kombucha to 1.25%.
Blumenauer: It's a natural process.
We're simply not able to regiment it
in a way that keeps under that half a percent.
Narrator: This new limit is not unheard of.
Canada's kombucha is allowed to contain 1.1% alcohol,
and Australia's, 1.15%.
They're forced to make their product
according to the tax code,
not what their customers want to drink.
Narrator: It would also allow kombucha
to be closer to its original form, ethanol and all.
They have to decide if they want to make kombucha
the way it's always been made for a couple thousand years
and have an alcohol content,
or if they're going to use a solution like ours
where they can get the alcohol out.
Narrator: The act would also allow more wiggle room
for kombucha to naturally keep fermenting on store shelves.
Hannah: I anticipate that the industry
is going to explode once the act passes.
Narrator: But will the KOMBUCHA Act pass?
Well, the House denied it once before.
And now that Matt already has his distillery license,
even he is on the fence.
Matt: I don't see that happening.
There's a lot of instances where that's irresponsible
to serve something with that alcohol content.
I don't want my kids drinking something
that's 1.5% alcohol.
I'm really confident that we're going to see it pass.
People write laws, people get laws changed.
GT: What I don't want, which could happen
if things don't change, is these industries shut down,
and all you have is a
seltzer that says kombucha on the label,
which would not be good for anyone.