Skip to main content

Boochcraft’s High-ABV Kombuchas are Here (and Delicious)

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Health and wellness practitioners have long touted the benefits of drinking kombucha. This fermented tea has grown to prominence as a home-brewed elixir for everything from gut health to enhancing mood. Commercial brewers have caught on, and packaged kombucha can be found at grocery and health food stores from coast to coast.

The flavors of kombucha can be extreme. Fans of sour beers may recognize some familiar elements in the drink’s profile like vinegar, a sharp acidity, and association with various tart fruit flavors. To balance the drink, many kombucha makers add in herbs, spices, or juices to enhance the existing flavors or to create their own special blend.

Being a fermented drink, the traditional alcohol levels in kombucha are very low. If kept to less than half a percent, it doesn’t count as a federally regulated beverage in the United States. But that absence of booze has left an opportunity for brewers to step in and fill a niche for higher alcohol kombucha. That’s where Boochcraft comes in.

Boochcraft makes “hard” kombucha, with each drink in their line hitting the 7% alcohol by volume mark. At the same time, they’ve formulated recipes that are on the mild end of the kombucha spectrum. The smart flavor combinations create refreshing, bright drinks that are approachable and enjoyable. These kombucha varieties are available in cans and on tap just like traditional beer.

Boochcraft

The 2019 lineup of Boochcraft offerings include:

  • Grapefruit Hibiscus Heather: Don’t be afraid when this one pours pink — it’s just the hibiscus working its magic. The fermented tea is sweet and rich with notes of cranberry and strawberry along with the expected grapefruit tartness.
  • Ginger Lime Rose Hips: The sting of ginger makes this one reminiscent of home-brewed ginger beer. The lime brings a twist of bitterness and the rose hips help smooth out the rough edges.
  • Orange Pomegranate Beet: New for 2019, the savory and sweet flavors combine as the biting sugar of citrus underlies the fleshy dryness of beets.
  • Lemon Maple Thyme: Another new offering, in which the sharp bitterness of lemon is offset with maple sweetness. The thyme adds a bit of herbal complexity.

Boochcraft is available in cans right now up and down the west coast in major grocery and beverage stores. Boochcraft is also available on draft in select markets.

Editors' Recommendations

Lee Heidel
Lee Heidel is the managing editor of Brew/Drink/Run, a website and podcast that promotes brewing your own beer, consuming the…
Remember Surge? Here’s What Happened to the High-Octane Soda from the ’90s
surge soda comeback can feature

The year was 1997 (the best year of the '90s, if you ask our Food and Drink Editor, Sam Slaughter). The likes of Third Eye Blind and Chumbawamba were — by some miracle — running the charts, Clinton was in office, and Coca-Cola was trying desperately to compete with Pepsi’s greenish-yellow pride and joy otherwise known as Mountain Dew. Their solution? Surge.
A hybrid soda and energy drink combo devised before the popularity of Monster and Red Bull, Surge was something of an anomaly at the time. Coke had already fallen short with tries like Mello Yello and the even more obscure OK Soda. It was time to up the intensity.

The soda would attempt to live up to the $50 million marketing campaign that backed it by incorporating maltodextrin. The food additive comes from starch and digests quickly. Bodybuilders and gym rats see the stuff all the time in their energy drinks or dietary supplements. Putting a fair amount in a soda was a relatively new idea at the time.
The ads were a sight to behold. Inspired by the extreme sports culture of the time, they were over the top, outrageous, and high-voltage. To a legion of young and impressionable youth, it was an invitation to be reckless, well before alcohol came into the picture. Surge wanted skateboarders, rollerbladers, BMX-riders, and folks sporting SOAP shoes to go big or go home, with a highly carbonated beverage in hand.
Surge Soda Commercial 1997
I used to stop at 7-Eleven on the way to middle school to grab a six-pack of the stuff. My friends and I would divvy it up, throw back a couple of the neon-tinged drinks and pretend we were out of control. It may have been the excessive amounts of carbohydrates and sugar, it may have just been play. It was probably some combination of the two.
Surge was loud and full of abandon — like that friend who never said no to a dare, despite the number of hospital visits.

Read more
Branch Out from Basic ‘Bucha with Wild Tonic Jun Kombucha
Wild Tonic Jun Kombucha

If you’re a fan of kombucha, we have a new drink that we think you’re going to like: jun. Pronounced like the month, jun is a fermented beverage a la kombucha that has a higher alcohol percentage and, depending on who you ask (and what flavors you try), can be tastier than ‘bucha.

In terms of what Jun is … well, that’s about as clear as a cup of black tea. For the most part, people agree that the base is green tea and honey (whereas kombucha is made from a base of black tea and unrefined sugar), which needs to be fermented with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast).

Read more
What foods are high in iron? These staples will help you live a healthier life
Add these high-iron foods to your shopping list today
Ribeye caps topped with garlic and herbs cooked in a cast iron pan over charcoal.

What foods are high in iron? We all know that iron is important for a healthy, balanced diet, but did you know you can find two different kinds of iron in food: heme and non-heme. Your body can absorb iron from heme (animal-based) food better than from non-heme (plant-based) food sources. Where can you find heme food sources? Read on to find out about foods high in iron.

If you eat a plant-based diet, you’ll get a lot of non-heme types of iron. As a result, your body might need a bit of help to absorb it properly. Sometimes vitamin C can aid with the absorption of plant-based kinds of iron. Regularly consume both plant and animal-based sources of iron to get the best of both for your body. 
What is iron?

Read more