What Are Live Cultures?

What Are Live Cultures?

Remedy Kombucha is the real deal: small-batch brewed the old school way, using a live culture that is natural to our drinks. But what are these live cultures? We know they’re good for us, but why should we care? Here’s the lowdown on live cultures.

What are live cultures?

Live cultures are a form of “good” bacteria. They come in the form of microbes associated with foods and drinks, often acting as fermentation agents.

We use two specific live cultures/strains of bacteria in our kombucha: Yeast of the Saccharomyces genus, and bacteria from Acetobacter and Gluconobacter species. Both have been found to have a range of proven health benefits, and are major contributors to transforming Remedy from sweet tea into liquid gold!

How are live cultures made?

Our live cultures occur naturally and plentifully in our drinks, because we brew our kombucha the old school way. We use a live culture that is a descendant of the very first batch our founders, Sarah and Emmet, made on their kitchen bench.

While our live cultures are au naturale, this is not always the case. Some drinks labelled as “live cultured” have been dosed with live cultures instead, meaning they are not naturally occurring.

We pride ourselves on the fact that there’s no need to dose our booch! If you use the right ingredients and don’t try to rush the brewing process, you get a good ol’ fashioned, tasty-as-heck, live cultured drink.

What’s so good about live cultures?

Live cultures can potentially support gut health by:

  • Increasing the diversity of your gut flora, aka the good bugs that live in your gut to get things working as they should.
  • Preventing the growth of bad bugs that can make you sick.
  • Supplying billions of microorganisms that are full of vitamins, minerals and fibre, which the healthy bacteria in your gut use as a food source to produce important metabolites for good health.

What is the live culture count in Remedy Kombucha?

Our live culture count sits at a mighty minimum of 330 million per 330mls of Remedy Kombucha!

How do we know? Chuffed you asked! We test every batch during production to ensure the live cultures stay healthy and strong in every one of our drinks. We also conduct regular shelf-life testing to ensure those live cultures are still going strong right through to the end of shelf life. Yep, our team reaallllyyyy have their work cut out for them.

How can you tell your kombucha is alive and kickin’?

It's super simple to test whether your kombucha is alive! Pour it into a glass and let it sit in a warm place for a few days. If you use Remedy Kombucha, a SCOBY (AKA the mother) will form. Pretty amazing stuff, right?

If you want a healthy dose of flavour (and live cultures!), go pick a flave and get sipping!

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