4. The House Culture

Without our SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) all we have is a sweet tea, it's through the magic of fermentation that the kombucha metamorphosis happens. 

What sets Left Field above so many of our competitors is the culture itself. When Left Field was started in 2016, what we wanted to do was to make a kombucha that was approachable and accessible for everyone without those overbearing vinegar notes and overwhelming sourness that is often masked with sweetness and fruits.

Why Make the Effort?

For us, the aim was to make a grown up, sophisticated, savoury drink that was chock full of good bacteria and healthy goodness and the SCOBY is how we got there. There are thousands and thousands of types of bacteria and yeasts in a SCOBY and each of them imparts its own benefits and flavour signature, and each prefers a particular environment whether that means warmer or cooler, more or less acidic, more or less oxygen or CO2, caffeine, glucose etc.

Knowing this allowed us to manipulate these levers to promote just the right culture with the right levels of the bacteria and yeasts we want to make the right kombucha.

However it’s not quite as simple as that, a SCOBY is like nature in miniature. With each type of bacteria and yeast trying to be king of the jungle and squeeze out the competition. That means we have to put a huge amount of effort into keeping the SCOBY in balance and stopping the introduction of new bacteria and yeast from outside. We do this by sterilising the water we use before steeping the tea, having charcoal air filters in and out of the fermentation room, and rigorously and frequently sterilising the room as a whole and all the equipment.

What Happens if the SCOBY Dies?

Of course the risk we have is that by having a unique super-SCOBY that makes super kombucha that is so unlike anyone else’s, is that if we had to start from scratch we’d never be able to develop a SCOBY quite the same again. We keep two samples cryogenically frozen in a lab as well as a number of backup storage batches in the fermentation room and the cold room. Therefore, we have physical insurance that Left Field can keep going, as long as our customers enjoy our kombucha. 

As you can tell, we are passionate about creating a high quality kombucha, hence our dedication to developing our own SCOBY.