It is the question we get asked more than any other - at markets, by stockists, by people who have tried brewing at home and want to know what we do differently.

So here it is. Four steps, no secrets.

Step 1: The tea

Everything starts with tea. We use organic teas, steeped in stainless steel, with organic raw cane sugar.

The sugar is not there for sweetness. It is there because it is what the culture eats. By the time the brew is finished, most of it is gone - converted into the acids and the carbonation that make kombucha what it is.

This is the part most people get wrong at home. Cheap tea makes cheap kombucha. There is nowhere for it to hide.

Step 2: The starter

We add a portion of a previous batch - what brewers call a starter. It is mature, acidic, and packed with the bacteria and yeast we need.

Two reasons. It gets the fermentation moving quickly, and it drops the pH straight away, which protects the brew while it is at its most vulnerable.

A brew without a good starter is a brew waiting for something to go wrong.

Step 3: The SCOBY

SCOBY stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. It is the pale, rubbery disc that forms on the surface of a kombucha brew, and it is the part everyone finds strange the first time they see it.

Think of it as a reef. It is not the organism itself - it is the structure the organisms live in. The bacteria and yeast do the work; the SCOBY is where they live.

Every batch of Hippie starts with a mature SCOBY, and over the course of the brew it grows another. The culture is not consumed. It is passed on.

Step 4: The bottle

Here is where we part ways with most of the industry.

Most commercial kombucha is fermented, then stopped, then carbonated from a gas cylinder before bottling. It is faster and more predictable, and there is nothing wrong with it. It just is not what we do.

Our core range is bottle-conditioned. The kombucha goes into the bottle live, with fermentation still to run. The remaining yeast keeps working, and because the bottle is sealed, the carbon dioxide it produces has nowhere to go. It dissolves into the liquid.

The bubbles are not added. They are made. That is what pet-nat means, and it is worth its own explanation.

No added carbonation. No acidifiers. No juice concentrate. Whole ingredients, and the brew does the rest.

What that costs us

Honesty time: our way is harder.

Bottle conditioning means the product keeps changing after it leaves us. It means we cannot pasteurise, so it needs a cold chain from our door to your fridge. It means there is natural variation from batch to batch, because fermentation is a living process and not a formula.

We finish every brew on pH and Brix - measured, not guessed - but the culture still has a say.

We think that is worth it. A drink that is made by fermentation tastes like fermentation. It has structure, and acidity, and a finish. It is not a sugar hit with a sour note painted on top.

That is what we mean by Brewed Not Made.

Brewing at home?

Do it. Genuinely.

We have met tens of thousands of people at markets over the years, and a good number of them brew their own. Their stories are excellent - the triumphs, the disasters, the jar that got forgotten in a cupboard for three months.

We are not precious about it. The more people who understand what fermentation actually is, the better it is for all of us. If you want to have a go, have a go.

And if you would rather we did the work, we can do that too.

Shop the range · Find a stockist