Researchers uncover the mystery of Kombucha fermentation

Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage that has been brewed around the world for centuries, but it has been widely popular in recent years.

Kombucha is a kind of symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (commonly called SCOBY) fermented and sweetened tea, and flavoring is added to enhance the taste

Chris Curtin, assistant professor of fermentation microbiology at Oregon State, said: “If there is no one organism that is usually the most important benchmark, there will be too many variables in the production of kombucha.

Keisha Harrison, a PhD student in Curtin and Curtin's lab, recently published a paper on their Kombucha microbial research in the journal Microbiology, which began in 2017 When Harrison joined the laboratory in 2009

Harrison gave a presentation on this research at Kombucha, the annual technical conference for the kombucha brewing industry

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Before Curtin and Harrison's research, other scientists had discovered the microbial communities that promote fermentation in other foods and beverages, such as wine, cheese, and certain types of beer

In a recently published paper, Curtin and Harrison began to change this situation

The main finding is that there are basically only four main types of SCOBY

Harrison said: "This is the first comprehensive picture of the ecology of the SCOBY microbial community

This research was funded in part by Kombucha Brewers International and the Oregon Agricultural Research Foundation

Journal Reference :

1. Keisha Harrison, Chris Curtin.