WEBVTT - Kombucha: Fizzy Goodness 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.240 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:20.800 should know the podcast. Although Jerry's not going to be 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.640 around for long, everybody, so savor her, relish her, smell 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:28.960 her hair. Yeah, all the stuff that you like to 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:30.520 do to people you like. 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.440 Awkward start for one on the booch. 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.000 I should probably hold on. I should probably explain Jerry's 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.600 not going to be here for this recording session. She's 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:46.640 always going to be around around Oh sure, okay, I 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:48.840 just want to make sure people weren't like, where's Jerry going? 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:50.199 What'd you guys do to Jerry? 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:50.800 Right? 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:52.919 I don't need email like that now? 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:53.560 Who does? 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:57.200 So, Chuck, you already let it slip. What our topic 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.120 is today, which I'm surprised. 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:06.800 That's right. The butch aka kombucha, which is some people 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.720 call it kombucha ti, but everyone calls it kombucha really 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:14.520 in practice. But you know, we're talking about the beverage, 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:24.800 the sort of odd tasting fizzy sweet teed probiotic drink 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:28.720 that is very popular right now that I don't drink. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:34.160 Emily drinks it every day, No surprise there, although she's 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:36.479 switching brands now. We'll get to that later. 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.399 Okay. I can't wait to hear it because I drink 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:39.520 it almost every day too. 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.440 Yeah. I don't like the flavor, so I just don't 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.480 drink it. That's just a simple one for me. 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.920 Well, you don't like anything vinegary, so of course you 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:48.840 don't like kombucha. 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:51.120 Yeah, that's a good point. 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.240 You know, you don't like mustard, you don't you don't 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:56.920 like white vinegar, I don't like pickles, you don't like 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.800 apple cider vinegar. You don't like red wine vinegar. 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:03.320 M I mean, I'll take a little bit of that 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:06.880 or maybe some balsamic vinegar on a salad. Oh, But 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:09.280 other than that, vinegar is a tough sell for me. 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.760 Okay. But or the reason we're talking about vinegar is becau. 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.480 Kombucha has a kind of a vinegary thing going on. 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.799 It's very tart, it's very acidic. And you said something 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.080 in there that I don't think I fully realized. Although 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.160 I kind of knew it was one of those things 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.399 where I had all the information, I just never put 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:32.440 it together into a cohesive hole. Okay, But kombucha is 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.799 fermented sweet tea. Yeah, and I mean, of course there's 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.000 other stuff in there, but to make kombucha and it 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.560 just be raw, pure kombucha. All you need is sugar 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.280 tea and then something called the scobie, which we'll talk 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:50.320 about soon. And you put those things together, let them 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:52.480 sit in a glass jar with the lid off and 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:57.160 a little bit of muslin over the top and a dark, warm, dry, 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:01.680 very important place for I don't know, a week, two weeks, 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:03.480 you're going to have kombucha. 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.840 Yeah, and it sort of belongs alongside other things like 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:13.720 yogurt and sour kraut, where the the microbes are a 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:15.840 big part of the appeal of these things that you 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:16.760 can put in your body. 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:18.920 Yeah. Can we can? I just call out the sentence 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.520 that Olivia wrote because it's hilarious. Sure she's she wrote 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.560 that kombucha is a food in which microbes are a feature, 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.919 not a bug. It was definitely worth a hat tip 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:29.480 at least. 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.400 Have you ever seen the Volkswagen Beetles with the license 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:33.359 plate that's his feature? 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:36.960 No, it's always very I don't get out that much though. 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:44.560 Uh So you'd mentioned scoby. Scoby stands for it's an 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:48.760 acronym se o BI stands for a symbiotic colony of 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.800 bacteria and yeast, because that's exactly what it is. If 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.080 you look at a scoby, you might hurt it called 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.360 a mother or a mushroom, like the mother, Like, what's 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.400 it called like a mother? Yeah, But if you look 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:06.280 at a scoby, it looks disgusting. Uh. It looks like 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.600 something out of a science lab, like out of a 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:13.440 petri dish. It's round and sort of pancakey and gelatinous, 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.160 and it looks like brain matter or something. It looks gross. 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.919 It looks like the muffin top of a jellyfish, but 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:21.440 just the muffin top part. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.440 Sure, that's that's another good way to put it's kind 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:24.960 of gross too. 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.760 And that that mother, that mushroom, or that scoby is 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:31.960 what I saw far and away, at least in America. 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.760 It's most people who grew brew kombucha call it a scoby. 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:36.720 Yeah. 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:41.560 There's a specific term for it, a solid phase cellulosic pellicle. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:42.480 Yeah. 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:48.480 And when you dig into it microbal microbially, it's astounding 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.520 what it actually is. It's like a really unique kind 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.600 of thing that seems to only grow in kombucha from 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:57.440 what I could find. 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.240 Yeah, and it's what it is actually, or how it 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.680 functions at least in kombucha. It's sort of the fuel 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:09.160 that drives that fermentation process that take that sweet tea 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.839 from just regular sweet tea to the fermented, bubbly, weird 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:15.640 tasting thing that you enjoy. 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:20.240 Yeah, and it's really insolvable, like you can drop it 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.400 in just about anything and it will hold its shape. 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.520 It has a lot of tensile strength, apparently it can hold. 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:30.760 So it's cellulose made of little tiny fibrils and there 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.600 I think one hundred times thinner than the cellulose fibrils 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.560 you get from a plant. Plants are lousy with cellulose, 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:45.240 but this cellulose is extruded from bacteria, little tiny, tiny 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.680 little things of cellulose that end up getting woven together 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:53.600 to create this large structure that can hold I think 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.400 one hundred times the amount of liquid or water that 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.680 plant cellulose can and it's a hundred times thinner than 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:06.240 plant cellulose. And it's being extruded pooped out of these 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.120 little bacteria that are building this thing over the course 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:09.800 of weeks. 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.520 Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, Like, if you've made one 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:15.120 that was the size of a hammock, you could put 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:15.760 a house on it. 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:18.880 Yeah. Easy, I'm just kidding. 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:20.560 I haven't done a math on that. 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:25.880 No, it's in there somewhere, though, So Chuck, I think 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.320 we should we'll hold off on how to make it 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.039 a batch of kombucha, although it's not that hard. But 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.520 it turns out that that that symbiotic colony of bacteria 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.760 and yeese, it's a pretty good descriptor because that's what 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:42.160 is in that scobie. And there have been studies of 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:44.159 what's in there, and what they found is that there's 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:48.520 an ever changing cast of characters. Yeah, but that there 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:53.480 seem to be a couple that are really responsible for 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.800 forming the scobie and then in turn creating kombucha. One 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:01.800 is a bacterium called chould. 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:07.120 You want me to do this? Sure, get Koma gatti 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:08.560 bacteria bacter. 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.480 Yeah, I think that's okay, yep. And then that's the 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.720 stuff that forms that cellulose that gives the scobi its structure. 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.600 And then inside there's some yeast, and specifically the yeast 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:20.000 from the. 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:25.040 Genus Bretons bretton nomosis. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.400 Sure, and those are the ones that actually seem to 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:29.640 do most of the fermenting. 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.120 Yeah, and we have, well, at least in this case, 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.240 there was some Oregon State University researchers named Keisha Harrison 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.160 and Chris Curtin, who a couple of years ago looked 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.120 at one hundred and three scobi's that are used by 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.280 brewers here in North America. That yeast they call it brett, 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.360 and it's sort of an used to be used a 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.320 lot for old ales in nineteenth century England apparently huh, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.000 not used a whole lot for beer anymore because it 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:02.040 tastes funny except for like lambs, and also used in 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.520 barrel aged red wines. And I think in wine you 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.360 just don't want too much of it. And then beer nowadays, 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:11.240 like I said, unless it's a lambic, they usually try 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.640 to get rid of it, things like a contaminant in 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:14.480 beer these days. 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.520 Even so, it sounds old timey, I guess then the 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.760 breat and that actually kind of dovetails with kombucha's image. 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:23.960 It has an image of being like an old timey, 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.440 super old timey ancient, I guess is a better word 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.160 brew ferment to brew that a lot of people say 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.400 dates back to all the way back to two twenty 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:38.320 one BCE, which is when supposedly the emperor of the 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:43.560 Chin dynasty started brewing it himself, and that it was 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:49.600 considered an elixir of life, a tonic for immortality. The 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:51.920 thing is is like, if you talk to anybody in 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.280 the kombucha community, they'll give you that story. But it's 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.640 just a story, like there's really hazy when you start 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:00.280 to try to trace the LINEA. 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:06.000 Yeah, Butcher's that's right. Uh yeah. There was another tale 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.200 about six hundred years after that, from the fifth century CE, 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.480 about a Korean doctor and this is possibly a name 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:17.880 origin because this doctor was named Kambu Kombu who brought 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:22.079 a medicinal t to emperor. Would that be in Kio? 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:26.320 I think so, yeah, all right of Japan and said 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:28.520 and some people say, well, that's clearly where the name 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.319 came from. Other people say, well, I don't know about that, 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:35.400 because there's also this Japanese fermented tea from back in 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.160 the day that was derived from kelp that was called 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:43.319 kambu and then cha is t so kombucha, But there 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.800 is no seaweed in in kombucha as we know it now, 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.439 So I don't think anyone really knows the exact origin 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:50.000 of the word. 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.120 No, but it is possible that that kombucha that seaweed 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:58.560 fermented seaweed ta just got used for the wrong thing 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:00.839 and it's kind of went off on that lineage of 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:05.160 history and that's where it came from. Again, what we're 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:08.640 talking about are stories. There are some ancient documents that 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:13.800 I think mentioned that Korean doctor Kambu. Yeah, but still 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.000 it's just not definitive. To get definitive, you actually have 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.960 to go to Russia and Ukraine in the late nineteenth century. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:22.199 Yeah, surprising. 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.360 That's finally where you can definitively start to trace the 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.040 history of what we call kombucha. 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:29.679 Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see it there too, 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.920 But apparently after World War One they were lousy with 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.960 the stuff. It started to spread around Europe. Apparently in 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.599 the Westfalia region of Germany, became very popular for a 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:45.240 little while. In Italy in the middle of the twentieth century, 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.600 it became so popular that a couple of things happened 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.600 that there were people mixing it with holy water to 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:53.920 use as sort of like a tonic and a fokrimony, 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.160 which priests there did not love. And there was a 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.199 song that you can go listen to, you know, you 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:01.960 can go to YouTube and listen to it from nineteen 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:07.520 fifty five by a guy named Ronato Kerazone, and the 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:13.280 song was called Stu Fungo Chinza or the Chinese Fungus, 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.960 and it was a popular song. That's I listened to it, 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:17.960 and it's not very good. 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:22.040 No, it's got a lot of didd like mixed in 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.120 with it. But it's also kind of like a mambay thing. 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:29.200 It's a it's a mess. So strangely enough, Stu Fungo 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.600 Chinese did not kick off the kombucha craze in the 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.240 United States or in the West. It really was kicked 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.920 off by a Swiss study from the sixties. And I 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.040 do mean Switzerland, not Sweden. I apparently swapped the two 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:48.720 when I was talking about the oldest periodical in existence 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.479 in the Farmer's Almanac episodes. So sorry to everybody who wrote. 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.240 In yeah, we we know that those are two different 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:57.000 places and they're not even close together. 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.760 No, so it was inadvertent, No, exactly like I mix 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.800 up the names. I'm not actually confusing Switzerland was writing 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.599 like I know that much, so This was a Swiss Switzerland, 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:14.520 Swiss study from the sixties that said, hey, this kombucha 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.640 stuff that they're making over in Russia that's associated with 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:22.480 Russian grandmothers. This stuff is it's like yogurt, man, but 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:25.960 you can drink it. It's like drinkable yogurt. And we 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:26.440 don't mean. 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.920 Keffer, no, we don't did. It's still popular actually in 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:35.040 some parts of Russia. It remained popular throughout Soviet Russia. 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.640 They were you know, they didn't have like, you know, 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:39.840 American soda and stuff like that, so this is a 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.000 fizzy drink they could make, which sort of sub for that. 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.760 It seems like prisoners would brew it there. There was 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:48.839 even a case here in the United States in twenty 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:54.240 fifteen where arms dealer Victor Bout was brewing it in 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.840 a prison in Illinois. And we'll get to the alcoholic 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:00.440 content later, but the prison officials basically said, like, you're 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.480 making booze. You can't do that. So they added some time. 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.600 And apparently like kids in Russia these days, or not kids, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.520 but younger people are kind of on kombucha that they 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:13.600 rejected when they were younger because they were like, we 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.199 want American tasting sodas, and now there's a newer trend 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:19.480 where they're like, oh no, this is sort of like cool, 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:23.280 this is the old Russian version, and they're back into 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:24.040 brewing it again. 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.280 Yeah, it's so it got exported somehow to the US. 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.640 It blew up in the US, and we exported it 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.560 back to Russia, and now Russian hipsters are into kombucha. 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:37.280 Even though it was their grandparents like homebrew, and I 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.240 think it was also not just they wanted coke and 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:45.040 pepsi and probably mostly coke. They associated it with their 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.520 grandmother giving it to them as if it were almost 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.880 like medicine or a health tonic, and nobody surrounding and 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.280 drinks a health tonic. No, you rarely do. And this 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.400 kind of had that association with it too that got 0:13:57.520 --> 0:13:59.720 stripped of it. Even though it's considered a healthy drink. 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.000 Health tonic is really stretching how it's considered in the 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.040 United States. So it got kind of repackaged and gussied 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:09.959 up and turned into a really fun beverage that kids 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.400 are really into and that will just make you immediately 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:14.560 cooler if you're seeing out in public drinking it. 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.160 Yeah, as far as the Chinese connection, It sort of 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.800 depends on who you're asking. It sounds like it may 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:25.720 have been regional because there was this writer what was 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:30.160 her first name, Zong is her last name for Folk 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:32.040 Life magazine. 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:36.120 Her first name, Chuck is precisely Laura. 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.040 Laura. Okay, Well, she wrote about this in folk Life 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.840 Magazine and asked her immigrant Chinese parents and they were like, 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:45.840 I don't know what you're talking about. She said, well, 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.480 let me ask my friend who still has a bunch 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.120 of contacts in China, and her friend got in touch 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:53.720 with her people in China and they're like, I don't 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.040 know what you're talking about. But then there was another 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.120 Chinese American writer named Betty Lou and her father a 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.640 like recalled, you know, fond things about kombucha from Shanghai 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.040 and these big neighborhood batches. So I think theirs was 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.120 green tea and honey though instead of black tea and sugar. 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.880 So maybe it was a variation, a regional variation. 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.960 Yeah, they called it hong cha June. Yeah, not kombucha, 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.520 but it does sound similar, and if you stop and 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.920 think about it's just how it's a simplicity of what 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:28.320 kombucha actually is fermented sweet tea. It's entirely possible that 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.320 cultures that have tea and have had tea for hundreds 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.680 and thousands of years and stumbled onto this, you know, 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.440 independently and just called it different things, made it with 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:42.440 slightly different ingredients. But it seems very clear that the 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:47.000 kombucha we drink today was exported from Russia and Ukraine 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:48.200 in the nineteenth century. 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.560 Yeah, and before we break, I think we should cover 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.520 this last little bit that's super interesting about how it 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.800 regained popularity in the eighties here in the US though. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.320 Was it was for AIDS patients. There was specifically one 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.400 AIDS patient. He was a act up New York member, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.240 an activist named Sander Katz who had this kombucha and 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.440 it you know, those AIDS drugs early on at least, 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.280 were really rough on the stomach, and it helped him 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.520 and it helped him keep his food down. It kind 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.240 of settled the stomach, and then it got passed around 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.440 the gay community. And I think he found out about 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.400 it from a friend in like nineteen ninety four who was, 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.080 you know, a home brewer and went on to write 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.840 a book called Wild Fermentation in two thousand and three, 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.720 and so it was the AIDS community of the Northeast 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:41.320 United States. 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:43.640 It really kind of got it going again here. Pretty cool, 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.800 very cool. You want to take a break, then let's 0:16:47.800 --> 0:17:05.920 do it. Okay, we're taking a break. Everybody's starting now. 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:22.120 All right, So now we are back in the United States. Uh, 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.280 kombucha these days, well, for a while before sort of 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.160 this this modern time that we find ourselves in. Who 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:34.639 was spaceship just flew by? Uh? Someone should ask Chris 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:35.359 Christie about that? 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.000 Oh man, that was crazy. 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:39.320 Did you see that? 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:40.439 Terrible question? 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:45.280 Yeah, he was pretty funny about it, though he's he 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:50.200 is a likable guy. Uh So, kombucha for a while 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:52.639 was and it and it's still sort of popular with 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.119 hobbyists because brewing in general, and home brewing is really 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.720 regained in popularity with beer and meat and all kinds 0:17:58.720 --> 0:17:59.440 of crazy things. 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:01.920 I also, I think there's a suspicion too among people 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.359 who make kombucha that the stuff that's mass produced just 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.640 can't hold a candle to the stuff you would make 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:07.400 on your own. 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.320 Probably, But that's how it was for many many years, 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:16.600 starting in the eighties, until about the midish nineteen nineties, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:18.920 when a guy who we're going to talk about a 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.480 little bit now that you may have heard of named 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:26.400 George Thomas Dave or GT. Dave started brewing kombucha at 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:31.000 home and his bell airhouse as a teenager. As legend 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.520 has it, he got his scobie from a friend who 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.200 got it from a trip to the Himalayas and his 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:39.800 mom was drinking this stuff Dave was making going through 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.520 cancer and claimed that it helped her beat cancer, which 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.120 was officially part of the company's lore until they were 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:49.680 forced to remove it after a lawsuit in twenty ten 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.959 about deceptive health claims. But he is the maker. If 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:59.280 you've seen Synergy kombucha in the store, it's the biggest 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.879 player out there. And that's the one Emily drank until today, 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:05.880 and that's that's Gt. Dave. 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.120 Yeah, if you've ever seen kombucha in the store, you've 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.399 seen Gt. Synergy. I mean, it's just there's such so 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.439 many different flavors of it, and like the it's just 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.280 it's clearly been around longer. It's got its thing down path. 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.440 And like you said, this guy was brewing this when 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.960 he was in high school and he started in ninety five. 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.879 In two thousand and five, he took it National, and 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:33.960 you can say that pretty much is when kombucha really 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.440 started to make headway. Didn't take off like a rocket 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:39.320 quite yet. If you go back and look at the 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.480 dates on a lot of the research articles that you'll 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:48.280 find on kobucha, I'm like CNBC or Forbes or whatever, 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:51.880 they're like twenty seventeen eighteen, and they're all like, what 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:54.560 is this stuff? So it took a while to gain 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.200 some traction, but he took it out of the health 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.479 food store and started to get into grocery stores, and 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.040 that was what really kind of laid the foundation for 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.440 kombucha to be introduced to America as a whole. 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.400 That's right. And the sort of unfortunate part that has 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:16.160 come out more recently is that Synergy is going through 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:20.679 a few different lawsuits right now because allegedly it is 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.320 even though this is a drink that is touted is 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:28.320 being made with love and good vibrations, there are some 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.719 lawsuits going on now because allegedly it is a terrible 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:38.000 place to work and Gt. Dave allegedly would purposefully hire 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:42.000 undocumented workers so they could be taken advantage of with 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.800 brutal work hours, no breaks to eat, no breaks for breaks, 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.520 go to the bathroom super fast and get back to work. 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:55.639 It's so hot in there that you're sweating into the beverage, 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:57.679 and then you have to go to a freezing place 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.080 and your clothes freeze up. Just some sounds like some 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:03.560 pretty bad stuff happening there, allegedly. 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.920 Well you say allegedly, but you don't have to say 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:11.240 that anywhere because as of I think this month, California 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.000 judge said, nope, this is all true. I'm ruling against Gt. Dave. 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:20.000 Yeah. Well, yeah, that was a lawsuit from that's long standing, 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.840 but there are I think some new ones, and he's 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:25.639 been denying this the whole time. Basically, I think his 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:28.919 quote was something like, I don't want to paraphrase it. 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:30.720 Well I guess I have to paraphrase it, so I'll 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:33.879 have in front of me. Sure, But basically like, yeah, 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:37.320 you know, lawsuits are just the cross eye bear, you know, 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.800 when you get popular like this, that's just how things go, right. 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:44.200 That this is he just dismissed them all as frivolous 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:47.639 in that quote, like indirectly basically, although these are have 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:52.959 been brought by multiple people in multiple lawsuits over multiple years. Yeah, 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:56.159 so yeah, this judge apparently does not like him, and 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:00.280 the judge is in charge of all the cases and 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.200 apparently has said before that Dave lies through his teeth 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.280 and is totally not credible, and if you put him 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:09.320 on the stand, I'm going to tell the jury not 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:10.200 to believe him. 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:11.040 Like this. 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.560 This judge has said this like in court. So he's 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:15.320 having a rough time of it for sure. 0:22:16.080 --> 0:22:19.000 Yeah, And of course I told him this. She was like, oh, well, 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:20.560 I guess I'll find a new brand. 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:22.960 Well, there's so many great brands out there too, Like 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.640 I mean, there's a lot of Like if you are 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.400 into kombucha or you're about to be into kombucha, after 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.359 listening to this, you are in a beautiful time to 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:35.000 be into kombucha because there's a lot of good brands 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.120 that you could find in just about any grocery store. 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:40.879 And yes, indeed, it is a golden age for kombucha 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:41.400 right now. 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.959