Brew Dr Kombucha is the kombucha brand of Townshend’s Tea Company of Portland, Oregon. It makes use of a unique technique for lowering the fermented tea drink from the natural 1-3% ABV to below 0.5% legal limit for nonalcoholic beverages. It then makes use of the by-products for creating gasoline among other stuff.
Check out the production process that classifies as the most interesting beverage production process in the country below;
Step 1
The tea is saturated using sugar, and then tea leaves are removed by staining the solution through a 500-micron filter. This helps in obtaining sweet tea.
Step 2
The sweet tea from step 1 is allowed to ferment in tanks using 2,000 gallons of a symbiotic culture of yeast and bacteria. The said symbiotic culture is known as SCOBY. In about two to four weeks, you will obtain Kombucha but it will have a very high alcohol count and thus cannot be sold.
Step 3
The Kombucha obtain from step two is then heated to a temperature of 104 degrees, followed by passing it through a spinning cone column (SCC). This helps with the removal of ethanol (at 12-14% ABV) without causing any changes to the flavor. The end product of the SCC is Kombucha at 0.1% ABV; this is a low enough alcoholic count and can be sold.
Step 4
Chilling tanks are filled with ethanol. Some tanks are filled while keeping the flavor of the original tea in mind. Once 5,000 gallons have been collected, the ethanol is passed through the SCC again for helping it to attain the required strength for a spirit, 40% ABV.
Step 5
The rest of the ethanol gets stored without any consideration of the flavor. When 10,000 gallons are stored, a shipment is sent to Pacific Ethanol in Boardman, Oregon. It undergoes further fermentation over here using corn stock and is then distilled for removing the corn. It gets passed through a molecular sieve for the sake of purification. The removed corn is collected and used as corn feedstock.
Step 6: The ethanol is mixed with gasoline using a ratio of 90:10, and then sent to the gas pumps in Portland.