We took the brews out of the brewery and into the city. A small, invited group gathered at the Library Hall of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo for our first proper public taste testing.
Four bottles, four ferments: Blue Butterfly Pea, Beetroot & Lemon, Hibiscus & Lemongrass, and Sour Orange & Ginger. No sales pitch, no music, no menu cards. Just cold glass, clean palates, and a notebook on every table.
What the room told us
The Library Hall, with its long shelves and quiet shoulders, turned out to be the perfect setting. Conversations slowed down. People actually tasted, then tasted again.
A few things became very clear:
- Hibiscus & Lemongrass won the floral category by a wide margin. Tasters kept coming back for a second pour.
- Beetroot & Lemon divided the room in the best way. The earth-versus-citrus debate is exactly what we wanted to start.
- Blue Butterfly Pea got the strongest visual reaction, but the flavour notes were equally well received once the colour stopped doing the talking.
- Sour Orange & Ginger quietly outperformed expectations as the food-pairing favourite.
Why a tasting matters
Kombucha is alive. It moves, it ages, it changes with temperature and time. We can run the numbers in the brewery for as long as we want, but until a brew lands in a stranger’s mouth, we don’t really know how it lives in the world.
This room of tasters, friends, chefs, hospitality folks, food writers, told us things our spreadsheets never could.
What comes next
A second tasting is on the calendar. We’re heading south, with two new test brews on the bench, and a few notes from Colombo to chew on first.
If you’d like to be invited to the next one, get on the list through the contact page. Bring a clean palate.