ST. GEORGE — Dan Cavagnaro started to homebrew kombucha tea in his South Beach home nearly six months ago. The fermented beverage tasted great and helped alleviate his Crohn's disease, he said.
"I thought this is like the nectar of the gods," Cavagnaro, 26, said. "I want everybody drinking it because it's really good for you."
After realizing few companies sold the tea without putting it through a pasteurization process — which he said kills a lot of the health benefits — Cavagnaro decided to take a leave of absence from graduate school and produce it himself.
Cavagnaro partnered with his friend Brett Gruber and launched Bay Street Bottling this month. The pair leased space at Office at 76 Bay and plan to sell their first bottles of "St. George Kombucha" to stores across the city next month.
To make kombucha, Cavagnaro first brews tea with honey and sugar then adds a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast to ferment the drink, which adds a small amount of alcohol in the process.
The longer it ferments, the higher the alcohol content becomes.
The pasteurization of most kombucha keeps the alcohol low and removes some bacteria, Cavagnaro said.
"They're just not doing it right," he said. "You kind of lose the meticulous attention of a homebrewer."
Cavagnaro said the pasteurization process kills the flavor and many of the health benefits of the drink, so he uses a shorter fermentation period to save some of the bacteria and keep the alcohol content at .5%.
He also plans to use as many local ingredients as possible and even travels to a natural spring in Troy, N.Y., to get water for the drink. He's also working on planting the black, green and holy basil tea leaves he uses in his kombucha in the back of his office building.
The company plans to make 200 bottles a month of the drink, which will cost $5 for 11-ounces, and eventually expand it to 400 a month. Eventually, the goal is to open a health food store in St. George with a kombucha bar in the center.
The first batch of "St. George Kombucha" is currently in the fermentation process, and Cavagnaro plans to give out samples in health food stores across the city to convince them to carry the product.
