From a chance tasting in Los Angeles to seeing a gap in the Australian market, Emlyn Gavin and Oliver Budniak set about creating Australia’s first alcoholic kombucha, Bower Hard Kombucha. Pippa Haupt spoke to Emlyn Gavin.
On a holiday in Los Angeles nearly two years ago, the friends and surf buddies Emlyn Gavin and Oliver Budniak came across a series of tasting rooms with long queues out the door. Their interest piqued, the pair joined the line into JuneShine, a brand regarded as a hard kombucha pioneer in the US. Once inside, Gavin and Budniak were introduced to a beverage that ultimately changed the course of their careers and led to the creation of Bower Hard Kombucha.
“We were blown away by how good it tasted, and the fact that even though it contained alcohol it managed to retain the same health benefits as non-alcoholic kombucha,” Gavin recalls. They were taken by the innovation and baffled it didn’t exist in the Australian market.
“At that point, we didn't really think too much about it. We were on a trip and we both had jobs,” he says.
But it was returning to Australia and seeing the proliferation of non-alcoholic kombucha that Gavin and Budniak started thinking.
“There are so many brands in the market. Once we started noticing it, we couldn't escape it. Everywhere we went there was kombucha but nowhere was an alcoholic version on offer. That planted the seed,” he says.
“We decided to give it a shot and then disappeared down the kombucha rabbit hole. The first thing we did was order jars from Amazon. Then I started brewing regular kombucha, trying different variables with types and blends of tea, the length of steeping time, and the water temperature.”
A competition of flavours
Gavin says they knew from the outset that to make the best hard kombucha, they had to perfect a standard kombucha first.
“I spent three months experimenting until I was confident with the base recipe. From there I needed to work out what flavours would be popular with consumers. I went to the shops, bought basically every fruit and botanical I could find, started juicing them in a blender, and experimenting with different flavours and ingredient combinations.”
is made from 100 per cent organic ingredients.
For market research, Gavin invited 40 people over for a barbecue and taste testing. Everyone was given a scoring sheet to rate the varieties he had prepared on aroma, flavour, and aftertaste to provide a clear picture of which flavours were the most popular.
The result was Bower, a 100 per cent organic, naturally fermented, low sugar and preservative-free alcoholic kombucha with 4% ABV.
And the winning flavours from the barbecue? Summer Fling (Watermelon & Mint) and Sunset Passion (Passionfruit & Raspberry).
“That was the start of the journey. We knew we were onto something when people were saying to us, ‘Wow, I don’t even drink kombucha, but this is delicious’,” Gavin says.
Another motivator for the pair was the plethora of hard seltzers on the market that used synthetic flavours. Their goal was to develop an alternative that had the added appeal of kombucha’s health benefits for the gut, immune system, and inflammation among others.
From idea to shelf
From prototype to production took months of searching for a co-packer. Eventually Gavin connected with kombucha brewer, Zentient, which is based on the Central Coast north of Sydney. It had also been experimenting with alcoholic versions and was open to working with Gavin and Budniak.
The pair bought fermentation tanks to produce Bower on a commercially viable scale. The ‘mother tank’ contains the scoby culture and is in a temperature-controlled room at 25C. Its pH level is monitored hourly to keep it stable.
Bower goes through two fermentations over 28 days. The first creates its non-alcoholic kombucha base using organic green tea and the second adds champagne yeast to make it alcoholic.
Then the hard kombucha is infused for several days with fresh-pressed 100 per cent organic fruits and botanicals.
The whole process takes around three and a half weeks, with everything tightly controlled to ensure consistency with each batch.
“That was a big challenge,” Gavin says. “We had to learn pretty quickly how to make the process consistent. Working with fermentation means you’re dealing with live bacteria, so it’s one thing to make the product great once, but the trick is how to do it at scale, repeatably.”
For distribution, the pair directly enlisted a small distributor to ensure Bower was kept refrigerated. Gavin says the fact the cold chain is not commonly used in the alcohol industry provided an unexpected aspect of launching a new refrigerated product to market – educating the market.
Building the brand
Named after the founders’ favourite surfing spot, Bower launched with a pop-up tasting room overlooking Fairy Bower near Manly on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, attracting more than 3000 people. “This is a lifestyle brand we are creating – we are our target customers, us and our friends and our demographic – so it needs to be emblematic of the life we want to live.
“We wanted to make a drink that we can enjoy in the evening and then feel good enough the following morning to wake up at six and go for a surf,” says Gavin.
And cheers to that.
This story first appeared in the April/May print edition of Food & Drink Business magazine.
