A quarter of a century after discovering kombucha being made by friends on their boathouse in Teddington — and upholding the tradition and standard for making authentic kombucha commercially in the UK ever since — we are sorry to announce we are having to wind down our little business in its current format.

As individual GO Kombucha varieties sell out they’ll continue to be available in mixed packs until our entire stock runs dry in September. If ordering in bulk ensure you have enough fridge space or somewhere cool like a cellar (see our summer storage guidance here, and keep an eye on our online shop for availability)…

ALWAYS BOTTLED IN GLASS

When we started brewing kombucha in small batches in 2003, it never occurred to us to make it any other way. We have stayed true to the authentic Ancient Chinese method without adulteration or industrialised processing, and always bottling in glass to this day — the natural and safe medium for living, bacterially active tea.

However, sadly our home of 19 years — at a family vineyard in the heart of the beautiful East Sussex countryside (below) with its own spring well that made our kombucha extra special — has been forced into voluntary liquidation; another victim of the attack on small and agricultural businesses.

AT THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO

We’ve looked into every way possible to keep making GO Kombucha, including contract bottlers who could meet our award-winning specifications. But the two key things that make our kombucha real — being entirely unprocessed and bottled in glass — have proven to be the very obstacles standing in the way.

Most soft drink contract bottlers today only pack in cheaper plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Of those who still bottle in glass, pasteurisation is built into their process. Many run a mile when we explain our kombucha is unpasteurised and alive with billions of good bacteria and yeasts!

Not pasteurising — nor applying other industrialised processes like filtration and artificial carbonation — is at the heart of what we do. It’s what creates honest, wholesome kombucha virtually indistinguishable from homemade. Yet this is what consumers believe they’re buying when they pick up “kombucha” in supermarkets.

FALSELY LABELLED KOMBUCHA

It is a sad indictment of the sector we pioneered in 2003 — and paved the way for all who followed — that so many mass-produced “kombucha” brands today are made by contract bottlers using the same instant base mix: a proprietary concentrate called Manna-K that requires no fermentation time.

Beware falsely labelled “kombucha”. These invariably canned drinks are routinely pasteurised and filtered for shelf stability. They pour clear instead of with some cloud (sediment) and cannot grow a SCOBY — yet they still call themselves “kombucha”. Lax, poorly-enforced UK labelling laws allow this deception.

M&S’s new range of 750ml bottled “kombucha” is displayed in the ambient soft drinks section yet the label doesn’t state that all the yeasts have been removed to enable. It’s no longer viable for authentic, wholesome kombuchas in glass bottles to compete with dishonest, cheaply made “imposter brands” in the retail space.

Despite being heavily processed or artificial, they still carry the name “Kombucha” on the can (or bottle!). The uninformed consumer will instinctively almost always choose the cheaper option, believing it to be the real thing, unaware that they are in fact buying a far inferior product.

KOMBUCHA IN CANS HEALTH RISK?

Some undergo “tunnel pasteurisation” inside the can. Heat kills most live microbes — the raw and most essential component consumers believe they are buying into— while the active acidic environment can cause aluminium and chemical leaching from the porous plastic lining over time — especially if not kept chilled.

No long-term testing has been done on the cumulative effects of trace aluminium and microplastics in the body, particularly their ability to bypass the blood-brain barrier with daily consumption (click here for the potential risk to health of live acidic low pH drinks in cans).

Hence why we have always used glass bottles for GO Kombucha despite the far higher cost. But for most “kombucha” makers today, profit trumps consumer safety and it’s harder to compete with these cheaper, inferior and potentially toxic products that bear little resemblance to real kombucha yet still carry the name.

It’s rather ironic that it’s our authenticity and integrity and our refusal to join the herd that beat us in the end…

Thank you for your loyalty over the years. It has meant everything!

Gary Leigh, GO Kombucha Founder 2003-26

GO kombucha WINTER REPRIEVE

We’re delighted to announce that over the autumn and winter and into spring we’ll be at our home of 18 years continuing to brew and hand-bottling smaller but more regular batches of all our varieties to maintain stock levels.

Exactly the same quality GO Kombucha made to the same authentic recipe and exacting standards that we’ve supplied for over 23 years. But for the foreseeable future we’ll be hand-filling each individual bottle with the bottle label, batch number and sell by date applied to the outer case due to our no longer having the use of a bottling machine.

The bottles themselves will be unlabelled due to the prohibitive cost of printing labels for individual small batches compared to machine-bottled runs of up to 9000 bottles. But you’ll still continue receiving the same delicious taste and benefits of drinking the UK’s top-rated kombucha range bottled in glass, as always!

Our ‘naked’ bottles will start rolling out from October and will be clearly flagged as such on our online shop pages!