Profile: Boochacha, Wareham, Dorset, UK
Boochacha was founded in 2021 at the start of the pandemic lock-down after Hebe Ibbotson had returned from an 18-month career break which took her to Japan. It was while staying in a small town there that she first tasted ‘booch — a can of Californian Nova Easy hard kombucha served in a local bar. It was love at first taste.
She immediately felt the health benefits of the drink and was pleased to discover an active community of homebrewers. Once she sampled their ‘flat’ and tart fermented beverage she was even more impressed than she’d been with the commercial brand.
Discovery and launch
On returning to the UK in the summer of 2020 she discovered a couple of friends had started brewing their own kombucha. She was gifted a SCOBY and began her own homebrewing adventure.
She was immediately struck by the simplicity of homebrewing and in March 2021 launched Boochacha with the mission of encouraging others to take the leap into homebrewing the “drink that’s good for you and the planet”.
Homebrew kits
Boochacha sells a range of equipment for homebrewing success, including a SCOBY, starter liquid, instructions, teas, and sugars. What stands out are her beautifully designed, individually painted, Ultramarine Kombucha Homebrew Kits. She spray-paints glass bottles, partly to hide the “rather messy” SCOBY floating on the ferment, and partly to encourage people to see these as attractive gifts. These continuous brew containers offer newbies an easy way to launch their homebrew adventure.
Good for you, good for the planet
She lists the environmental benefits which include the facts that “you don’t need to buy it in a can / bottle! That already saves the environment from the production, shipping, recycling cycle, which we don’t always have the best faith in.”
Hebe also lets people know that homebrew kombucha could be the easiest, safest, and most delicious way to fit a daily serving of pure, real, raw probiotics into your life. She points out that homebrewed kombucha has innate advantages over store-bought bottles:
It’s the equivalent to growing your own vegetables, going to pick them when they’re perfectly ripe, just before you’re about to eat them! Imagine the extra vitamins & minerals bubbling inside compared to the ones sat on shelves for days.
Word of mouth
Hebe notes that word of mouth is the most common way in which people discover the simplicity and ease of homebrewing. She hears from customers who gift Kits to friends and even though the initial £55.00 investment might seem steep to some, when compared to the typical £4.00 cost of a single bottle in the UK, it more than pays for itself for anyone (like me!) who can easily consume a couple of bottles a day.
Podcast
To hear Hebe tell the story of her new company in her own words listen to the podcast audio.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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