Like all the good things in life, our kombucha is quite simple. We use a few carefully chosen organic ingredients combined with the knowledge of our craft brewers and the magic of fermentation, to make delicious, low-calorie drinks.
To create each Equinox Organic kombucha we start with just three things: filtered water, organic green tea and organic raw cane sugar. Each of the three is crucial to providing the perfect environment for our unique SCOBY to do its work transforming our sweetened tea brew into the living kombucha we’re so proud of.
In this blog we’ll be focusing on sugar and how we use it in our kombucha. We’ll take you behind the scenes at our Yorkshire brewery to learn how we balance the sweetness and other flavours in our booch. And we’ll lift the lid on sweeteners and why there will never be a place for them in our drinks.
Quality and low quantity
We choose cane sugar, rather than sugar beet, because it’s the only way we can source a truly organic, GMO-free sugar for our drinks.
It also tastes great. Raw cane sugar is an ancient ingredient that needs minimal processing. It has delicate molasses flavour that imparts depth and complexity to our kombucha.
Although we start with sugar in our recipe, our drinks contain less than 4g per 100ml. That’s less than many fizzy soft drinks, for example:
- Coke has 10.6g per 100ml
- San Pellegrino Classic Italian Taste Limonata has 7.97g per 100ml
That’s because the fermentation process uses the sugar up feeding the probiotic microbes and eventually turns it into the delicious antioxidant rich, slightly tangy kombucha we know and love.
Balancing the complex sweet, tart and fruity flavours of each Equinox Organic Kombucha is the job of our experienced team of craft brewers. Whether we’re adding the sharp zesty notes of citrus that give our Sicilian Lemon its zing, or the ripe fragrance of tropical fruits like our Organic Pineapple & Mango in cans, we always want the natural sweetness to shine through.
Tips from our brewing team
From sweet tooth to sweet enough already, our craft brewing team are here to help you find a kombucha you’ll love.
organic blood orange can
From £36.13 for 24 cans
Sweet enough already – try our Organic Blood Orange, the punchy citrus shines through
Organic white peach & Strawberry
From £24.65 for 12 bottles.
In search of sweet sunshine – you’ll love White Peach and Strawberry with its summery strawberry fragrance and sweet juiciness
Organic fiery ginger can
From £36.13 for 24 cans
In search of balance – our Organic Fiery Ginger pairs gentle sweetness with the heat of ginger root for a brilliant balance of flavours
The downside of sweeteners
We’re all aware of the harmful effects of too much sugar, but did you know that the artificial sweeteners in many soft drinks, including some kombuchas, may be free from calories but they do have consequences for your gut?
We’ve been told that artificial sweeteners are inert in the human body, but research is starting to show that many sweeteners can have an impact on our gut microbiome, damaging the balance of the important friendly bacteria that live there.
In short, our gut friendly bacteria don’t know how to process these chemicals, so they react unpredictably, potentially leading to metabolic and inflammatory changes that contribute to vascular dysfunction and cardiovascular disease and changes to blood sugar levels.
100% natural is the way to go
For us at Equinox, the priority has always been to keep things natural and simple. Our drinks are low in calories because they are made in a traditional way using just organic green tea, raw cane sugar and water as a base for our fermentation process, using our unique SCOBY*.
You will never find artificial sweeteners in our drinks, which means you can relax and enjoy an Equinox Organic kombucha swap whether you’re keen to limit the amount of sugar in your diet or to cut out ultra processed ingredients including sweeteners.
If you’re interested in some research about the effects of sweeteners on the delicate gut microbiota, you can find recent papers here:
Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance
The contentious relationship between artificial sweeteners and cardiovascular health
*Symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts
