“Kombucha Tastes Like Vinegar!” 

Have you heard this one before? While many first time drinkers say that Kombucha has a distinct vinegar-like flavor, the taste buds of long-time drinkers are often recalibrated to barely register the tartness of properly fermented Kombucha.

However, if allowed to ferment aerobically for a long time (at least 30-60 days or more in a small batch), the resulting liquid will grow more and more sharply sour until it can rightly be classified as Kombucha Vinegar, almost definitely too sour a flavor for sipping by even the most iron-stomached of Kombucha connoisseurs.

If you brew Kombucha for any length of time, at some point you will forget about a batch or just end up leaving a few Kombucha mothers in fermented tea for longer than normal.

Don’t worry, it’s not ruined…In fact, it now has even more uses around the house and can help you brew up quick batch of booch too!

What is Vinegar?

Vinegar has been in use as a flavoring agent, preservative and health tonic for over 10,000 years and can be fermented from nearly any sugar containing fruit. The word vinegar comes from the French “vin aigre,” literally sour wine, and was likely discovered by accident when wine was allowed to go bad in the vat. Sour refers not only to the taste but to the fact that it is fermented.

Not unlike Kombucha, the naturally occuring sugars of the grapes, malt, rice or other base ingredient for the vinegar is fermented into alcohol by yeast. Then bacteria consume the alcohol and convert it to healthy acids including acetic acid. Kombucha, like vinegar, is an acetic acid ferment.

Vinegar is well known to have many uses: from treating wounds, to cleaning, to salad dressing, it’s versatile and useful.

Kombucha and Vinegar: Similar but Different