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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Hard Kombucha Coming Soon in New Taprooms

Better-for-you alcohol startup Fermented Sciences Inc. in Ventura is making lemonade – rather, spiked seltzer – out of pandemic-related business interruptions. Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Beryl Jacobson told the Business Journal on-premise sales regularly accounted for about 20 percent of sales. That dropped to about five percent when bars and restaurants closed for on-premise dining and drinking in March. Complicating matters, the company had purchased its first brewery and taproom in downtown L.A.’s Arts District just 30 days prior. Prohibited from serving patrons, “we began using the space immediately for brewing and more innovation and research and development. We’re now using it fully for production,” Jacobson said. The result is a line of organic hard seltzers launched at the beginning of August under Fermented Sciences’ Flying Embers brand, its first product line introduction since going to market with its flagship line of hard kombuchas in 2017. Kombucha is a tea fermented with a symbiotic culture of bacteria and live yeast. Fermentation naturally makes Kombucha slightly alcoholic, but Fermented Sciences recipes have an extra bite – the company uses an adaptogen root blend to extend the kombucha’s fermentation and achieve higher alcohol levels ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 percent by volume. The drink has enjoyed a surge in popularity recently, fueled by praise from the health and wellness sector as being good for digestive health with live probiotics that fight off bacteria. Fermented Sciences’ new seltzers contain the same probiotics and nutrition benefits – no sugar, no carbs and 95 calories – as the company’s kombuchas. They’re similarly “hard,” too. While the company only went to market two years ago, it has decades of combined industry experience to lean on. Jacobson’s partner is Chief Executive Bill Moses, a legend in the world of fermented beverages and founder of kombucha manufacturer KeVita Inc., which rose to prominence before being acquired by PepsiCo in 2016. Fermented Sciences was born because Moses wanted to create alcoholic tweaks of the products he’d made at KeVita. He and a small team started experimenting at his property in Ojai late that year. All was rosy until December 2017, when disaster struck – the Thomas Fire blazed uncontrolled through 115,000 acres of rural Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, threatening to incinerate both Moses’ home and the research conducted there. “Bill and many on the team decided to stay behind the lines. They evacuated all the family and kids but stayed behind to protect the house, the property and all the cultures,” Jacobson said. Such is the origin of the “Flying Embers” moniker. “The name was in the fire,” he said. “(Bill) looked in the sky and there were just flying embers everywhere.” Business took off shortly after that. Fermented Sciences scored accounts with Erewhon in Calabasas, Vintage Grocers in Thousand Oaks and Whole Foods in the Tri-Cities area, and later established a statewide distribution deal with Reyes Beverage Group. Flying Embers products are now sold in grocery stores in more than 30 states. Including delivery, pickup and other distribution lines, Jacobson said the company sells 75,000 cases of beverage every month. In November, it raised $25 million in a Series B funding round. Jacobson said 2020 was gearing up to be a big year for Fermented Sciences and, despite the pandemic, it has been. “We worked out a first-of-its-kind collaboration taproom up in Santa Barbara with (Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.), who also has other locations including one in Westlake Village. … Rather than collaborate on one beer, we’re going to collaborate on the whole taproom and offer both all our kombuchas and all of their beers.” That is expected to open in September in a limited capacity keeping with local regulations, Jacobson said. The company is also in the process of transforming a vacant brewery in Boston into an East Coast Flying Embers taproom. As for the brewery downtown, Jacobson said his team is using it mainly to tinker with limited-edition concoctions while the facility in Ventura churns out the flagship drinks. He said the company plans to open the brewery to the public for tastings soon.

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