NO CAN DO! WHY WE HAVE BOTTLED IN GLASS FOR 20+ YEARS
IN OUR 20 years making GO Kombucha, it’s only ever occurred to us to brew it the traditional way; just as you’d make at home using the same four ingredients and method as passed down the generations, only on a bigger scale (think 1000L brewing tanks as opposed to 10L jars!).
In all that time we’ve stayed true to our ethos, never deviating from the principles that enable us to state, with complete honesty and transparency, that GO Kombucha is 100% whole and authentic. Just like it’s never occurred to us to use anything other than glass as the medium for our low pH acidified tea to reach our consumers.
As other brands emerged they, too, chose glass as the natural default. It is, or at least was, a no-brainer; kombucha wasn’t created over 2000 years ago to be drunk like soda from a can. Indeed, earliest records suggest it was drunk from iron contaminated clay pots that ended up killing the original pioneering emperors in search of the ‘elixir of immortality’!
Then, in 2017, maverick UK range Kombucha Kat announced that it was switching to “lacquered” - i.e. plastic-lined - cans, spurred on by similar moves afoot across the Atlantic. And so set in motion a domino effect whereby established ranges such as Wild Fizz, Jarr, Fix8, even the ethically-led Equinox Kombucha, succumbed to the temptation that packing kombucha in cans offered:
• The significant cost saving compared to energy intensive glass bottles;
• Less space required in storing and displaying the compacted cans on retailers’ shelves;
• Cheaper haulier costs due to the lighter packaging, and, not least;
• The virtual elimination of breakages compared to glass bottles.
Why canned booch tastes shallow
What those who piled into canning failed to tell their consumers, however, was that in order to stabilise their products in the entirely sealed environment of an aluminium can, their fermented teas required either the filtering of the beneficial yeasts and/or a degree of pasteurisation to considerably reduce the amount of active live microbes. And, in both scenarios, the application of forced carbon dioxide is required due to their weakened products’ inability to produce sufficient CO2 to effervesce naturally.
Failure to implement these measures could, in theory, turn a can of kombucha into a ticking ‘time bomb’ outside of a chilled environment, since the live microbes would otherwise continue interacting with the sugar to produce more and more CO2 until the relatively thin aluminium casing rips apart due to the expanding pressure. In a similar scenario, GO Kombucha’s 750ml glass bottles have cap seals that release under pressure to emit excessive CO2 if incorrectly stored in a warm environment, and the caps on our 250ml range harmlessly pop.
Any kombucha aficionado who’s ever drunk processed kombucha from a can lined with porous polymer plastic comprising over 200 chemicals will tell you that the taste bears only a passing resemblance to authentic, whole kombucha that kicks from a glass bottle, itself made, like traditional kombucha, with just four natural ingredients; sand, soda, ash and limestone.
Drinks interact with the environment they’re packed in, and canned kombuchas that are processed by default generally resemble a more mainstream, shallow-tasting soda that are already ten-a-penny in supermarkets compared to the acquired taste of whole, unprocessed bottled kombucha with their distintive, back-of-the-throat bite, thereby positioning their less complex tasting kombucha for mass market appeal.
In the process, the ready availability of canned “kombucha” in high street shops has been most people’s introduction to the ancient remedy, and so has duped many into assuming they are buying the real thing; i.e. unadulterated, whole kombucha as their labels are misleadingly designed to imply. Under UK labelling law kombucha manufacturers have to state any processes the product stated on the packaging undergoes, yet which most disregard and flout with abandon at the expense of traditional brewers who stand for intergrity and authenticity.
Kicking the can down the road
The rush to canning as a means to slashing costs and, in theory, boosting shareholder profits has been such a no-brainer for so many kombucha brewers that the sector has barely paused to consider the obvious potential health implications. We can continue to pretend to ignore these risks and kick the can further down the road (no pun intended), but the potential consequences of doing so could, eventually, have major reverberations throughout the entire sector. Then again, it may not. We just don’t know.
Which is why this conversation is needed now to evaluate the safety of plastic-lined cans as a medium for transiting all variants of “kombucha” to the end consumer – including those who flash pasteurise/heat treat their products once sealed inside the can, thereby potentially affecting the molecular structure of the polymer plastic lining and leeching toxic substances into their kombucha.
To put this into some perspective; had GO Kombucha been canned from early on all those years ago, the money saved in the long run would not only have negated a good deal of grief and sleepless nights along the way that come hand in hand with building an ethical kombucha business - it would have given our brand a head start in saturating the UK market and perhaps even the world with canned kombucha, making me a millionaire in the process. But it never occurred to me to do so because canning kombucha, aside from the potential health risks, is, as I’ve always maintained, all kinds of wrong.
GT Dave has always used glass
We can also look to the world’s most successful kombucha range - GT Dave’s Synergy Kombucha – who has never diluted his product, nor cut corners, and has only ever used glass bottles. Synergy is living proof that doing “the right thing” can still lead to a road of untold riches - even if GT did have millionaire parents to help set him on his path! It’s equally telling that in the UK at least, some of those that rushed to canning early on are no longer in business today, or soon after went bust. RIP Kombucha Kat, Wild Fizz, Fix8…
The day arrived when the canning industry cold-callers who had converted many of our competitors approached us, but I was ready for them. “Is there any firm evidence that exists to show that packing a live, low pH acidified tea in porous polymer plastic-lined aluminium cans poses no risk to public health?”, I would promptly ask each time they called, and: “Would you let your kids drink low pH drinks from plastic-lined cans?” The ensuing bluster as they attempted justifying enticing me to the dark side amounted to one word every time: “NO”.
Some fellow brewers I spoke to over the years who switched to cans – several of whom also retained glass bottles as an option for customers who preferred glass – were always quick to point out with a tone of righteousness that the plastic lining in their cans was free of Bisphenol A (BPA): an “endocrine disruptor” that can imitate the body's hormones, such as estrogen, and interfere with the production of, response to, or action of natural hormones. Their eagerness to point out they were BPA-free, however, appeared to be blinding them to other potential risks…
So, what has replaced BPA?
As Irina Webb on her popular web site, IReadLabelsForYou.com, has identified:
“On the one hand, it is great that many canned food manufacturers have stopped using cans with BPA-based epoxy lining. But on the other hand, most substitutes are not any better or simply are not disclosed. Thus, the common lining materials replacing BPA-based epoxy lining are oleoresin, acrylic resin, polyester resin, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) copolymers.
“Since manufacturers do not disclose the ingredients of those linings, we know little about chemicals that may leach from them. We do know, though, that PVC is made from vinyl chloride which is considered carcinogenic…”
Did any of these brewers pause to research the chemical compounds that replaced BPA? Or the potentially more absorbent nature of the polymers which consist of many identical small particles that are strung together like a chain that could enable a microbial (live) acidic tea to corrode the lining and interact with the aluminium can itself?
Aluminium found in sour beer
A scientific evaluation of the testing of sour (bacterially enlivened) beer - which, with a pH of 3.0 to 3.5, is identical to kombucha - concluded that plastic polymer-lined cans can seep trace amounts of aluminium as well as chemicals from the polymer plastic lining into the sealed product; residues of which from drinking several cans a day will accumulate in the body over time.
“Ah, but most soft drinks these days are canned, including low pH cola and sodas, and standard beers too!” canned brewers are also prone to holler. The pH of typical (i.e. non-sour) beer is in fact around 4.0 to 4.4 compared to kombucha and sour beer, and it could be argued that Coca Cola (pH 2.6 to 2.7) was sold in glass bottles for 69 years and Pepsi Cola for 55 years before switching to canning.
More pertinently, these billion dollar soft drinks multinationals have the financial clout to commission the expensive research and testing required and to use their own scientists to evaluate the findings - and to bury the results if the science isn’t to their liking while making sizeable donations to regulatory agencies like the FDA in return for approving their products as being “safe and effective”…
Coca Cola and PepsiCo would have long made the results public knowledge had internal research gone in their favour and proved beyond reasonable doubt that cans were a zero risk medium for low pH drinks. As the Friends of Glass web site and many who prefer the taste of Pepsi and Coco Cola drunk from glass bottles point out: "Being an inert and natural material, with glass there are no chemicals that can leach into the liquid and affect the coke's flavour. That's why drinking out of a bottle may be the best way to get the purest Coca-Cola flavour."
Compounding this, kombucha is a live, microbial liquid which, in theory, could have a more “proactive” effect when interacting with the can lining than ultra-processed, inert sodas the longer the product is contained within a porous polymer plastic and aluminium environment. Indeed, without the lacquered lining the intense acidity of properly-brewed kombucha would completely corrode the aluminum can within a matter of hours!
Brewers who think they know best
All of this misses the bigger picture, however; shouldn’t commercial kombucha brewers be setting a higher standard ethically than profit-hungry, often ruthless global conglomerates? A 2022 feature on this very issue, by KombuchaHunter.com, reveals some indifferent, aloof and downright ignorant comments by some US kombucha producers who had the following to say about sealing their beverages in plastic-lined cans:
BETTER BOOCH: “People have no issue drinking coffee out of a can or plastic bottle, or soda, both of which are much more acidic than kombucha... The truth is, leaching in packaging of any kind only happens at oven-hot temperatures...” Whataboutery, false equivalence (the pH of coffee is in fact 4.85 to 5.10), and no evidence exists to show leaching of product doesn’t occur at cold temperatures;
ROOT WILD: “Don’t fear the can! As a long-time kombucha producer, I have plenty of experience with glass and undoubtedly think that cans are the future of our industry…” Demonstrating an almost righteous disregard for the safety of their customers;
TRIBUCHA: “We became big fans of the crisp flavours and mouth feels you get when drinking kombucha from a can… We also test constantly before, during, and after we put it into a can….” Test what, exactly? Scientific evaluation done regularly over time as would be required is a prohibitively expensive process;
KOMBUCHA TOWN: “Cans have been considered safe for human consumption by the Department of Health, the FDA, the Canadian Health Agency as well as the European healthy agencies for decades.” Many people have little faith in regulatory agencies like the FDA to act in the best interests of the consumer. The EU itself banned gut-irritating sweeteners erythritol and steviol glucosides found lurking in many canned “kombucha”s for many years, until overturning the ban in 2017 due to lobbying from the food industry…
Conclusion
At GO Kombucha we don’t understand the mindset of any aware kombucha brewer who would contemplate using porous polymer plastic-lined tin cans as a medium for their low pH acidic tea. Yet responsibility ultimately rests with them to prove they’re selling a safe product which, when drunk cumulatively over months, years, won’t build up chemical and/or aluminium deposits in the customer’s digestive tract and gut that could lead to serious illness and health complications later in life…
~ Gary Leigh, GO Kombucha Founder
• Further reading: They Can, But We Never Will ~ www.baerbucha-kombucha.com