I once lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year. The saddest sound I ever heard was a newborn calf crying for its mother. That’s the hidden soundtrack of the dairy industry — cows separated from their calves within hours, udders swollen, pumped with hormones, antibiotics, and additives like Bovaer to squeeze out more milk. All that pain, all that chemistry, ends up in our coffee cups.

Enter Remilk, an Israeli foodtech pioneer creating real milk without cows. In partnership with Gad Dairies — one of Israel’s best-known dairy brands — Remilk has just launched The New Milk, a lactose-free, cholesterol-free, animal-free milk identical in taste and nutrition to cow’s milk. The product is now pouring into cafés and restaurants across Israel and will hit major supermarket chains in January 2026.

Related: Israel is the first country to approve the sale of lab meat

While we think safe, healthy, regenerative slow food is the best place to aim for, Remilk might be the healthy in-between until we get there.

Remilk’s milk is not plant-based. It’s real dairy protein, created using precision fermentation — the same process used in the biotech world to make insulin or vitamins. Scientists insert the gene for a cow’s milk protein into a microbe, which then “ferments” and produces that protein without the cow. The result: milk that’s biologically identical to dairy, minus the animal, methane, and moral compromise.

Remilk’s CEO Aviv Wolff calls it “a better, healthier, and tastier world through real milk made without cows.” Amir Aharon of Gad Dairies adds that the collaboration is “a defining moment where generations of dairy tradition meet groundbreaking technology.”

Three products are debuting under The New Milk line: a Barista Milk for cafés, and two retail versions — a regular milk and a vanilla-flavored option. They froth, foam, and taste just like the real thing, yet contain 75 percent less sugar. The milk is fortified with calcium and vitamins and, being kosher-pareve, can be served right after meat meals — a quiet revolution for Jewish kosher consumers long frustrated by dairy separation rules.

What Israelis really think about milk

Ahead of the launch, Remilk and Gad commissioned a national survey with Geocartography Knowledge Group. It found that 92 percent of Israelis still drink animal-based milk, but more than half also consume milk alternatives. There are more vegans per capita in Israel than anywhere else in the world. The main barrier for more people going vegan and dairy-free? Taste. Fifty-five percent said current substitutes “aren’t tasty enough,” while 50 percent of kosher-observant respondents said they’d happily drink coffee with milk after a meat meal — if the milk tasted real.

The New Milk may have found the perfect sweet spot: authentic flavor, ethical production, and a format that fits Israel’s dietary laws and café culture.

Beyond dairy guilt

Remilk’s animal-free protein has already been approved by regulators in Israel, the U.S., Canada (Canada gives the green light to cloned milk), and Singapore. Each market confirmed the protein’s safety and molecular identity with traditional milk. The company has raised more than $150 million USD and is scaling production globally.

Precision fermentation still uses energy, and its total carbon footprint depends on where and how it’s produced. Yet Remilk’s life-cycle analysis shows significant reductions in land and water use compared to industrial dairy. If scaled efficiently and powered by renewables, it could help phase out one of the most resource-intensive sectors of modern agriculture.

Read more on Israel’s uneven contributions to the alt meat and airy markets

Israel is the first country to approve the sale of cultured meat

Israel’s uneven impact in the cultivated meat market

Aleph Farms engineers lab-grown steaks from cattle cells

Slaughter free ribeye steak meat grown in a lab

Is lab meat kosher?

Lab-grown meat telling convenient lies about carbon footprint

Israeli alt dairy startup Imagindairy raises $15M seed

Israel’s Yofix offers dairy and soy-free yoghurt alternative

Vegan protein alternative for dairy industry (Yofix flexitarian plant dairy)

New vegan milk made from hummus (or chickpeas)

The post Israel’s first cloned milk hits cafés as Remilk and Gad Dairies launch “The New Milk” appeared first on Green Prophet.

Peapod wine (get the recipe here) often associated with the classic British sitcom The Good Life, where the characters Tom and Barbara Good make and drink a potent “peapod burgundy”. 

In the age of craft cocktails and artisan spirits, urban foraging and making the most out of the least, one unlikely throw-back is quietly making a comeback: peapod wine.

Once a humble “country wine” born out of thrift during hard times, it’s now being re-discovered for its simplicity, novelty and sustainable roots. The process involves simmering fresh green pea pods, discarding the pods themselves and fermenting the resulting infusion with sugar, grape concentrate (or raisins), yeast and other minimal additives.

Historically, peapod wine was born in rural kitchens where the shelling of peas left behind abundant pods and no desire to waste them. Rather than compost or discard, enterprising home brewers turned them into a light-bodied table wine. Vintage articles describe it as an old-school countryside favourite, and “a fine example of country wine thrift.”

The flavour profile is reportedly crisp, clean and surprisingly refined, with little trace of vegetal “pea” taste. Essentially, the fermentation and added grape concentrate mask the pod flavour, yielding a light dry white wine.

What’s driving the comeback? Sustainability. Up-cycling kitchen leftovers, minimising waste and making something homemade with basic ingredients resonates strongly with modern home-brewers and eco-aware drinkers. The DIY movement in fermentation (from kombucha to natural wines made from honey, even! ) has opened the door to recipes like this.

Also, the story and novelty add value: a wine made from what most would toss sparks conversation at dinner parties, tastings and small local producers seeking niche markets.

That said, it’s not without challenges: sourcing enough pea pods in the right season, ensuring sanitary fermentation, that they are organic, and ageing time (many recipes suggest several months to a year before optimal clarity and flavour). If the pods are healthy and young, I’d probably just eat them raw.

But for those willing to experiment, peapod wine offers a bridge between heritage, sustainability and craft. It’s a reminder that innovation sometimes means looking backward — to what humble home-makers did when times were tough.

We have the peapod wine recipe here.

The post Pea pod wine recipes are making a comeback with allotment gardeners appeared first on Green Prophet.

In a scientific win for poop, a new phase 3 trial out of Norway found that fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT)—yes, a literal poop enema—performed slightly better than the go-to antibiotic vancomycin in treating Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI).

Researchers found FMT to be noninferior (that’s doctor-speak for “basically just as good, or a bit better”) and possibly a gentler first-line treatment than antibiotics. This could be a game-changer in how we treat gut chaos—and a step toward embracing the full healing power of… other people’s poop.

Related: Seres and Nestle makes poop pills to replace antibiotics

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Green Prophet has been covering the rise of fecal transplants like a proud microbiome mama. From our early report on how gut bacteria can control your mood (and maybe your destiny) to the Israeli startup making synthetic poop capsules for people who’d rather swallow than squirt, we’ve been watching this digestive revolution unfold. But we prefer before you rush to medicine, to eat what fermentation doc, Sandor Katz recommends –– and that’s eating fermented food.

Now, with Norwegian researchers giving the royal flush to vancomycin, we may soon be saying goodbye to antibiotics and hello to artisanal, farm-to-bum therapies.

Related: Wombats have cube-shaped poop

Let’s not forget the bigger message here: modern medicine is slowly realizing what your grandmother and your compost bin always knew—shit matters. Whether you’re nurturing your gut with probiotic yogurt or contemplating a fresh stool smoothie, the path to health might not be lined with roses, but with microbes.

As the future of medicine continues to smell a little funny, we’ll keep digging into the science of sustainable solutions—one scoop at a time. ?

The post Poo beats pills? Norway backs poop transplant as safer treatment for gut-wrecking infection appeared first on Green Prophet.

In a world increasingly disconnected from its food sources, fermentation evangelist Sandor Ellix Katz stands out as a champion of microbial culture—literally. Author of groundbreaking books like The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation, both books I own, Katz has helped usher in a global revival of age-old food practices. His work is not only culinary but deeply ecological, spiritual, and political—highlighting how fermentation preserves both nutrients and traditions in an age of ecological collapse and over-industrialized food.

At Green Prophet, where we’re constantly exploring the beautiful dance of ecology, culture, and innovation in the Middle East and beyond, we spoke to Sandor Katz about the ancient roots and modern relevance of fermentation—especially in water-scarce regions like ours. Here is our Q&A.

Karin Kloosterman: In the Middle East, ancient fermented foods like labneh, pickled turnips, and date wine have long been part of daily life. Do you think fermentation could be a tool for ecological resilience in water-scarce, climate-stressed regions like ours—and if so, how?

Sandor Katz:
In every region of the world, fermentation is an ancient practice, an essential way in which people in varied climates and topographies have been able to make effective use of available food resources. Fermentation enables many foods to be preserved without refrigeration, breaks down toxic compounds in certain otherwise inedible foods, and enables some foods to be eaten with much less cooking, saving fuel. Fermentation is most definitely a tool for ecological resilience.

Kloosterman: From a microbial point of view, borders are meaningless. What does that say about our shared biological and cultural heritage when everyone is busy these days laying claim to their own unique heritage?

Katz:
I’m not sure I agree with the premise of your question, since all microbes, like every cell, have membranes that function as borders. But cell membranes, like all borders and boundaries, are never absolute—they are selectively permeable. Life processes require some degree of permeability for access to water, oxygen, minerals, and food, as well as the release of metabolic by-products.

Many varied microbes inhabit each of us, like every multicellular life form in existence, and they respect neither the autonomy of our individual bodies nor political borders. Specific microbial communities in different environments can vary quite a lot; yet their presence is ubiquitous. Our coexistence with the microbes present on our food is inevitable, yet the unique ways in which people in different parts of the world developed to work with this biological reality (that was not specifically understood until recent times) are distinctly cultural. Different cultural lineages have produced many distinctive fermented products. And yet so many of them are similar. Culture is never fixed; it is always evolving and always being influenced.

Kloosterman: Could fermented foods—rich in microbes—play a role in healing not just the gut but also trauma, memory, or even the land itself? Have you come across any stories that link fermentation to emotional or ancestral healing?

Katz:
Certainly microbes play a huge role in healing land and water, and as we learn about the important connections between gut microbes and brain chemistry, in healing human traumas as well.

Kloosterman: In a time of ecological collapse, techno-solutionism, and AI-driven agriculture, do you believe fermentation can re-root us in slowness, decay, and human-scaled knowledge? What’s one radical thing you wish more young eco-activists knew about microbes?

Katz:
I know that the ecological destruction and catastrophes activists are focused on are vast in scale, but in thinking about strategies we cannot overlook microorganisms. Microbes may be small, but they are numerous, they are powerful, and they are resilient.

Kloosterman: Give us a short overview on what’s keeping you busy now and how we can access your latest book/project.

Katz:
My latest project is a natural history of fermentation, which will be published next year by Timber Press. I continue to teach in varied locations, and you can find out where on my website www.wildfermentation.com.

Get Fermenting: Favorite Recipes from the Green Prophet Kitchen

At Green Prophet, we’ve celebrated Middle Eastern fermentation traditions for years. Here are a few of our favorite starter recipes:

• Labneh (strained yogurt):
  This is something my children would make in their Waldorf kindergardens, after making bread. Rich in probiotics and easily made at home by draining plain yogurt through a cheesecloth. Add olive oil, za’atar, or mint for a Levantine twist. Or try kefir.

• Sumarian beer:
  Beer used to be made by women, before it became big business. Travel around the ancient times by making a simple beer loved by our mutual ancestors.

• Preserved lemons:
  For a taste of Sinai and Egypt. This easy-to-make and easy to use spice uses the entire lemon. Just make sure they are organic. Get the recipe here.

Whether you’re fermenting on a balcony in Beirut or your basement in Boise, embracing microbial culture is a revolutionary act. In a time of upheaval, Sandor Katz reminds us that transformation—of food, land, and self—often begins with the smallest life forms.

The post Sandor Katz – a conversation about fermentation for the future appeared first on Green Prophet.

Below is one of the oldest written texts known to exist: a hymn in praise of the Mesopotamian beer goddess Ninkasi. Archaeologists surmise that brewing goes back to 3500 to 3100 BCE at the Sumerian settlement of Godin Tepe in modern-day Iran. But It’s not known exactly when the first beer was poured into a jug and tasted.

The Sumerians brewed many kinds of beer. The cuneiform tablet shown below is dated from “The sixth year of Prince Lugalanda,” ruler of southern Mesopotamia circa 2370 BC. It reports the deliveries of three kinds of beer to the palace and as offerings to a temple. The quantities of barley and other ingredients needed for making beer are carefully noted for inspection.

Beer was the everyday drink of the masses and of the gentry, as necessary as bread. Its nutritional value was high. It was also safer to drink than plain water, as the basic fermented liquor had to be boiled.

Barley was the grain used to provide the nutrients and sugars needed to ferment beer. It was used in the shape of barley bread dissolved in water, plus sprouted barley grains. It was a labor-intensive process, each ingredient matured separately and added in stages. Emmer, an ancient wheat variety, was added as well. Emmer is still around and is known as farro today.

Our dandelion beer recipe also relies on natural ingredients, but is much easier to brew up.

We have a partial recipe for Sumarian beer. It’s preserved in the Hymn to Ninkasi. The lyrical poem with its rhythmic verses was probably sung by workers in the brewing facilities. It illustrates the religious respect with which the Sumarians regarded beer, precious gift of the goddess.

“Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates.”

The poem goes on to describe the effects of the goddess’s gift:

“Drinking beer, in a blissful mood,
Drinking liquor, feeling exhilarated,
With joy in the heart [and] a happy liver…”

The whole poem may be viewed here.

We’ve brewed our own ancient-style beer at home: Ethiopian Tej. The traditional procedure eerily almost matches the ancient Sumerian method as outlined in the Hymn to Ninkasi.

Women were the home bakers of the time, so the responsibility for beer brewing was first theirs. When beer became a commercial enterprise, men took over the production. As a home-brewer myself, it seems logical that the first beer was the result of water into which barley bread fell, making a new ferment. The alcoholic odor was tempting – someone dared to taste the liquid – and decided to make it again, on purpose. As good a theory as any.

What was ancient beer like? We know that although recipes varied from region to region, it was probably somewhat sour, although sweetened with dates whose sugar content would have boosted fermentation. Honey was included in some recipes for the same purpose. It’s thought that it usually had 2 to 4% alcohol by volume.

It was cloudy and rough, with floating husk particles of barley and wheat and field dust. People drank the beer through a straw, avoiding the gritty stuff at the bottom of the jar. Here’s an illustration from those times. Note the sideways smile of the second figure from the left.

The Sumarians’ brewing methods developed over the ages into the beer we know today. Yet making alcohol from bread mashed into liquid has never left people’s minds. We have a funny note on that: jailbird booze.

This story went around brewer’s forums for a while. It was said that convicts would fill a garbage bag with Kool-Aid left over from lunches, then floated a slice of moldy bread (great yeast) on it. The bag was stashed behind the toilet. After a while the sugary liquid had become alcoholic. Of course, today’s ubiquitous security cameras put a stop to that.

Not something I would recommend. But If you’re feeling ambitious, you can make Tej to sip while munching on Mersu candy. For that good old Mesopotamian feeling.

The post All About Ancient Mesopotamian Beer appeared first on Green Prophet.

Olives ––  the symbol of the Mediterranean and of good heart health and peace. The Old Testament speaks of olives are as loved as honey, figs, grapes, and pomegranates. As cherished as they are, black olives may be keeping a not-so-healthy secret. Olives naturally turn from green to black when they ripen, but they usually don’t ripen uniformly. To even out the color and look of black olives, and to make them cure quicker, Californians invented a way to dye them so that they will look and taste great.

What we are saying is that most black olives that you buy are actually green olives dressed up in black! It’s like the take of pink pistachios.

So when you buy ripened black olives in a can, the olives are usually neither actually black or ripe. Many olives in a can are picked when they are green and are cured using an iron salt and brine and lye solution to cause the olives to darken and preserve quickly. Additives may include lye, acetic acid, chloride salts, iron salts (such as ferrous gluconate also known as ferrum sulfate) and compressed air bubbled through the olive curing vats help develop the black color.

Some health effects of eating ferrous gluconate, which is generally regarded as safe, or GRAS for human consumption: This chemical study found that there are people who may have allergies to ferrous gluconate, represented by the food labeling E number E579 in Europe: “Although ferrous gluconate is widely applied in food processing and is generally regarded as safe, it should be used according to the prescribed level. Excessive application can lead to iron overload.”

This site is a food additives watchdog that points out some potential side effects of ferrous gluconate, used as a common iron supplement pill. Possible Side Effects of Ferrous Gluconate E579 can be gastrointestinal discomfort, anorexia, diarrhea, nausea, heartburn, vomiting, constipation, fecal impaction, darkening of stools, gastrointestinal necrosis, and hematemesis. Allergic reactions and cardiovascular effects such as circulatory collapse.

Natural shops offer what they call black olives that are not “dead” or treated with pasteurization, lye and other chemicals.

They argue the case against additives in olives are to make them look better: “Olives don’t need to be this way. The difference between raw and pasteurised; between brine or salt or water and the chemical lye is little known, but significant on all levels. And that difference can be vast.

“Olives are a huge global market and something that we are likely to consume with little thought on a regular basis. Increasingly, even modern processing methods such as lye are being outpaced by techniques such as ultrasound, taking a natural process even further away from its roots,” they add.

Wait, is there a problem with green olives too?

Lye is a powerful corrosive substance which may be still present when you or your family eat the olives. It is used in commercial olive processing in both green and black olives to speed up the process, but like vinegar to make pickles, this method of using lye takes out all the good stuff that fermented fruits and vegetables can give you. Traces may be left on the olives.

Self sufficient culture explains why he won’t use lye. “I use lacto fermentation to cure my olives because I want good bacteria to survive the curing process and be present in my olives for the heath qualities it brings particularly for “gut” health.” We have piles of stories on health fermentation. Start with Jeff’s article on Sandor Katz.

While we have made and cured ripened black olives in the past (here is a recipe for making olives at home, which include blackened olives), we are now going to think twice about buying any black olive in brine if it means eating additives that may be harmful to my health or my kids. We are also going to look for naturally fermented green olives, because we didn’t realize that green olives in the can are industrialized.

How you can avoid lye and ferrous gluconate in your olives?

1. Make your own olives means you need to live close to a Mediterranean market or olive groves in California. We have done the process which involves washing the olives every day for a month and then letting them sit for a month more. My son did it for a school project without the washing part. They added salt and lemon and after a few weeks they were picked perfectly. If you live in a Med area country, there ma be olive trees that you can forage from in towns and cities. Ask around.
2. Buy your olives at a natural food stores with labels and vendors you trust.
3. Go visit natural, slow food farms as part of your summer holidays in Europe and eat your heart out.

Love everything about olives? Here is more:

Here are 17 varieties of olives. How many do you know?

Want to plant an olive tree in a container at home? Read here how.

Here is a story about the world’s oldest olive tree. Guess where?

Meet the olive oil pioneer who fixed his heart with olive oil.

The post Are black olives safe to eat? appeared first on Green Prophet.

How can you tell if a food is probiotic and good for your guts? Green Prophet gives a general guide.

You may know all about the ecosystem of a pond or a woodland, but have you stopped to think about the ecosystem of your own gut? Sandor Katz did and wrote a whole book on fermented food. Your digestive tract is home to trillions of organisms. For good health, we need to maintain a proper balance between those that are beneficial and those that are harmful.

How do you know if your gut “ecosystem” is in optimal condition?

Well if you:

• were born to parents with good gut flora
• were born in a vaginal birth
• had been exclusively breastfed for the first months of your life
• have eaten primarily nutritious, toxin-free food
• have seldom taken antibiotics, only when needed, and never for long periods of time

…then there’s a good chance your gut ecosystem is in balance.

Unfortunately, this describes practically no one in modern society (even if you like the Paleo Diet) which means we could all use a little help from our microbial friends. That’s where fermented foods come in.

What are some examples of fermented foods?

Before the advent of refrigeration, pickling was a much-needed way to save freshly harvested vegetables. Every country has its favorite pickled veggies – and the best source of information about local pickles is usually a grandmother. Some Middle Eastern favorites include pickled beets, pickled lemons, and dill pickles.

Before milk started to be routinely pasteurized, all dairy food had beneficial bacteria. Even today, some probiotic dairy foods are available. You can read here about natural, Slow Cheese in Europe. Many condiments also started their careers as fermented foods. One example is ketchup.

Closer to home, bright yellow “amba” – a mango sauce popular in Iraq and Israel and often drizzled on falafel – is another. Even soft drinks, such as ginger ale, which certainly aren’t healthy today, used to be healthy drinks brimming with beneficial bacteria.

How can you tell if it is probiotic?

Unfortunately, most, if not all, canned and bottled fermented foods you find in the supermarket are pasteurized. With nothing living in them, they can be stored for long periods. This is great for the manufacturer and retailer; but it means that these foods won’t help your gut ecosystem. These foods are technically “dead”.

Pickled vegetables (and fruit), will be probiotic if they are:

1. pickled without vinegar or oil.
2. unpasteurized.

What about yoghurt or kefir?

The modern process for making yogurt creates some confusion. The kind of yogurt found on your supermarket shelf is made from pasteurized milk; however probiotic bacteria are added to the milk to turn it into yogurt.

If it isn’t pasteurized a second time, it’ll have beneficial bacteria and will be labeled “bio”. Note that the fresher it is, the greater the quantity of more beneficial acidophilus and other bacteria it will carry.

Store-bought labane cheese, the soft sour cheese that Bedouin like to make, may be pasteurized and therefore not probiotic, but it’s easy to make your own labane from bio yogurt.

Fermented foods not only taste wonderful, they’re also wonderfully healthy. They even look attractive pickling in their jars. Once they’re ready, they keep in the fridge for months. They’re a wonderful addition to any meal.

Read more on fermenting:
Sandor “Sandorkraut” Katz’s Wild Fermentation, a Review
How to Make Pickled Lemons
How to Make Sourdough Bread

The post Fermented Foods Can Heal Your Gut appeared first on Green Prophet.

A must-try location in the Levinsky Market after Tavlinksy in Tel Aviv is Cafe Levinsky. In the heat of an Israeli summer, this is definitely a place you want to stop at. Ever heard of a gazoz? This is the drink to try at Cafe Levinsky. Ask Benny Briga about it, the founder and owner of Cafe Levinsky.

Benny Briga opened Cafe Levinsky because he loved nature. He loved how nature blooms beautiful and delicious fruits which he recalls plucking off of trees as a kid. Benny wanted to spread the pleasure of nature to others, which led him to open Cafe Levinsky.

After finishing in the military and traveling the world, Benny settled down in Tel Aviv. After exploring the hospitality industry and opening his own restaurant, Benny reevaluated his career and wanted to open a place that allowed him to invest in his childhood delights. He opened the tiny shop and bought a tank of CO2 and began storing all sorts of herbs and flowers in the tiny corner shop in Florentin in Tel Aviv. He began storing all it in jars with sugar water and making gazoz.

What is gazoz?

Gazoz is a bubbly seltzer drink made by the fermentation of fruit. (Like beer, Ethiopian honey bee, wine). The gazoz that Benny sells is non-alcoholic, all-natural, and highly nutritious. Similar to soda, gazoz is refreshing and makes the perfect beverage in the heat of the summer.

Gazoz goes way back was originally invented in Tel Aviv in 1909 and has been a popular beverage ever since. Each gazoz that Benny sells includes macerated fruit, syrup, and some type of herb, depending on the gazoz of your choice. For example, the “Green Almond” gazoz is made of arugula flowers, fresh lemon verbena, lavender, and dried licorice root stick. It is fermented with green almonds and syrup, and topped by seltzer and ice.

Benny made me an apple gazoz, which tasted fresh and sweet. Once you finish your gazoz gives free seltzer refills.

Sustainable practices

Cafe Levinsky also practices sustainable measures of service. For starters, the straws are all natural because they are made from apples. You can even eat the straws after you finished your gazoz. In addition, the spoons are made free of plastic. Benny also composts at his farm in Jaffa where they grow all of the ingredients used in the cafe.

A sustainable studio

Benny took me into the studio right around the corner from the shop were the fermentation magic goes down. The beautiful studio is filled with jars filled with all kinds of things, from fruits to herbs.

One of the oldest of which is six years old: the “Quince” is from 2017. A quince is a kind of apple that when cooked becomes pink. Benny thinks it is better the longer something is fermented. Some jars are fermented with sugar and water, while others are fermented with salt and vinegar. He also uses anaerobic fermentation and aerobic fermentation.

Each day, he ferments something new for the gazoz, constantly having new and tasty things for his customers. He also has a wide array of alcohols that are available to buy from the bottle from 5% to 7% alcohol.

The post Gazoz: Cafe Levinsky’s delicious summer time beverage appeared first on Green Prophet.

Kombucha is tea fermented over a floppy, gelatinous pad, the mother culture that provides friendly bacteria and yeasts. It’s said that kombucha originated in China centuries ago, traveling along with precious tea leaves over the Silk Road, eventually reaching Europe. The fermented tea is rich in probiotics, vitamins C, B6 and B12, and acetic and lactic acids. It has 0.5% alcohol or less. The mother culture is referred to as the SCOBY – a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeasts.

Kombucha has long been home-brewed in China, Japan, Korea,  and Eastern Europe. Its popularity in the United States and Western Europe rises and falls, as in  the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s and early ’90s,  when people drank it devotedly and to excess, hoping to raise immunities and create a healthier gut microbiodome immediately. Read our review on Sandor Katz who recommended fermentation and kombucha against immune suppressing diseases like HIV-AIDS.

But while kombucha’s properties make it a valuable part of a healthy lifestyle, it isn’t a miracle cure. One, or at the most two cups a day will supply all the probiotics, vitamins, minerals and acids that an adult can safely absorb at once. More than that would be like eating a gallon of sauerkraut or kimchi in hopes of getting all that good stuff in one go. Imagine what that would do to your digestion.

I brewed kombucha tea myself for years, and kept it in a big mason jar, with its culture, in a cupboard. It was tasty, with a little fresh lemon juice and honey added. My children thought the dark liquid with its placenta-like floating culture looked like an otherwordly life form. They called it “the alien in the cupboard.” When I moved house, I gave my SCOBY  away, but now I miss it and am looking for a new one.

By adding more sugar and yeast, and fermenting the tea twice or even three times, it’s possible to obtain  kombucha with 4.5 alcohol by volume, and even as much as 7%.  Following the wave of interest in healthy alternative cocktails, some manufacturers are now producing hard kombucha, also known as “boozy booch” in a variety of flavors.

The American Tax and Trade Bureau requires some companies to label hard kombucha as beer. But beer, it’s not. Beer is made from grains, and kombucha is made from tea.

Is hard kombucha good for you alcohol?

Does high-alcohol kombucha confer the same health benefits as the traditional, almost alcohol-free brew?

No, no really. It’s proved to have fewer calories and less sugar than grain-based beers, but makers of hard kombucha don’t claim their products have probiotic properties. The amount of alcohol in the drink simply kills probiotics off. 

Hard kombucha’s appeal is to those seeking a healthier and gluten-free alternative to conventional beer and wine.

Hard kombucha is part of the “good for you alcohol” meta trend. Other examples of this meta trend include non-alcoholic gin, hard cold brew, White Claw and Vizzy.

As the alcohol content varies from brand to brand, it’s a good idea to examine the labels and choose the hard kombucha that suits your style.

Hard kombucha is slightly sour, fizzy, and comes flavored with all kinds of fruit, flowers, and herbs. Ginger-tangerine or berry-hibiscus kombucha, anyone? Sounds good to me.

Hard kombucha brands in the United States

Flying Embers manufacturer Fermented Sciences raised $35M in a Series B round, led by PowerPlant Ventures and Ecosystem Integrity Fund. Other hard kombucha brands to follow?

GT’s
Kombrewcha
Boochcraft
KYLA (Full Sail Brewing)
Wild Tonic
New Holland Brewing
Unity Vibration
JuneShine

The post Hard Kombucha, The New Eco-Cocktail appeared first on Green Prophet.

It all started a few weeks ago with one thought. Paz Faigenbaum, top right, was stuck at home processing the shock that we are on lockdown and no one can leave their houses. He suddenly thought, there has never been a more relevant time to teach people exactly the skills he specializes in. For the last 18 years, he’s been studying and teaching Jewish based meditation, permaculture (growing your own food), medicine making and Feldenkrais, awareness through body movement.

He decided to build a 3-day workshop, in real-time on Zoom, so people could could connect to all the human needs we feel in isolation, but together, with spiritual guides and teachers. The 20 workshops for $15, will all happen real time, Israel time, using Zoom. Start to get used to the time change this weekend if you are in the United States.

“We can’t meet in person. We can’t go out for dinner. We can’t even pray in large groups. But we can still connect and build community – that’s the power of the human spirit,” says Faigenbaum.

He tells Green Prophet he feels very strongly about sharing these skills with the world, but  that it’s imperative now more than ever to redesign our lives from within our own homes. We need to become more resilient as individuals, communities both emotionally and practically.

“As I was musing over the drastic changes in the world,” he tells Green Prophet, “I was in conversation with two friends who were also thinking how to be of service to the community. Raphi Danan, a dear friend that recently launched Lokali, a community based platform to create intimacy within communities, to empower a collective economy in Tel Aviv but not exclusively and Raizel Druxman, a social entrepreneur, community builder and 3 Principles Therapist.

“It didn’t take long for us to come up with our vision: to host a 3-day virtual retreat that will cultivate connection, provide life skills and create the space that will foster insights for emotional, spiritual and physical transformation.”

Urban Farming from Home? 

Especially during corona times, Faigenbaum explains, we are all seeking connection, ways to stay grounded and to create a healthy, resilient lifestyle. “Our team is really moved by the unique opportunity we have now to travel beyond physical boundaries and virtually build an intimate community. We are inviting the wider community to join an interactive 3-Day virtual retreat as we move from Nisan, the month of personal and collective freedom, into Iyar, the [Jewish] month of healing,” he says.

“We are always free to heal, but between Pesach and Shavuot there is a special transformative energy to tap into. We can break free of our old beliefs, fears and insecurities, and find a new lens. It’s through these fresh eyes that we can start healing ourselves and our relationships, and create lasting changes in our lives,” says Faigenbaum.

The 3-day workshops include:

• Jewish meditation

• Feldenkrais – Awareness through body movement and aligning oneself

• Urban Jewish Farming growing food in small space at home

• Accessing the wild edibles and medicine

• Fermentation and the food security on a communal level

• Interactive sharing and sacred song

Teachers include, Raizel Druxman, Paz Faigenbaum, Rabba Dr. Melanie Landau, Rabbi Pesach Stadlin, Safira Klein, Raphi Dana. The effort is a collaborative one: FIG Food Integrated Gardens,  Lokali and Raizel Druxman, and generously subsidized by Moishe House.

Registration is closed. The event is over. Hope you enjoyed it or are inspired to start your own.

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