Inspired by Filipino flavors

Shortly after exchanging vows, Kat Gopez and her new husband, Paul Lovine, embarked on a year-long road trip across North America. Traveling 24,850 miles from coast to coast and border to border in a ruby red 1979 Volkswagen bus, the couple saw striking landscapes, met friendly people and indulged in delicious meals. But one experience—more specifically, a single taste—would keep the wild ride going for many years to come.

“We were into craft beers so we went to several breweries along our travels, and we came across kombucha,” she recalls. “We Googled it but there wasn’t a lot of information out there yet. I just loved the taste and couldn’t get it out of my mind the rest of the trip. It was love at first taste.”

That was in 2012, long before the effervescent, fermented drink was a popular item in grocery stores. With little more than an affection for the taste and a knack for DIY projects, Gopez decided to try making the beverage herself. But the drink, which involves fermenting a brewed tea using a SCOBY (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), requires patience and trial and error.

“There weren’t many home brewers then,” says Gopez. “I bought a SCOBY online and experimented with a lot of flavors to push my limit. My husband was very supportive and honest—he’s my best critic.”

Having grown up in the Philippines, Gopez was eager to inject some of her culture into her newfound passion. This includes use of traditional Filipino ingredients like lemon moringa, peppered jasmine, hibiscus and calamansi, commonly eaten in the Philippines and a favorite of Gopez’s. It comes from a small, dense shrub with a tiny citrus fruit that looks a lot like a kumquat.

“My brews are inspired by my culture and the nature that surrounds me,” she says. One of her oldest brews is elderflower juniper. To create this flavor, she foraged elderflowers in the Angeles National Forest and juniper berries in the Mojave Desert.

As the volume of her product began to surpass her family’s ability to consume it and her kitchen’s ability to contain it, Gopez began sharing—or, as she puts it, pawning off —her creation on friends and family. Unlike the unwanted dry raisin cookies gifted by a great aunt, the kombucha was well received. People started asking for more.

“They really encouraged me to start selling it at farmers’ markets and commercially,” she says. So in 2019 she rented space in a commercial kitchen in Canoga Park, where she produces large batches for sale online and at small local markets in the San Fernando Valley. Each brewer’s process may vary slightly, but Gopez’s kitchen space hosts eight 30-gallon fermenters to which she adds a brewed black or green tea, the kombucha culture and sugar. As the tea ferments, the culture consumes the sugar, leading to a flavorful probiotic beverage.

“The longer you wait, the more the culture can eat the sugar, which creates that beautiful effervescence,” Gopez explains. “I typically let mine sit about a month before it’s bottled.”

The result is a bubbly, tart-yet-sweet taste with a hint of vinegar that for many consumers leaves the stomach feeling settled and comfortable. Though research remains somewhat limited, many studies suggest kombucha promotes healthy immune and digestive systems.

“I feel much better after drinking it and my family does, too,” she says. “My 8-year-old son [Mato] tasted kombucha at 6 months old and enjoys it in small amounts on occasion. It can be an acquired taste. If you don’t like the first drink, I always say to try others. There are so many different flavors and styles.”

Thinking back on her first brush with a berry-flavored kombucha on a trip that entailed literally pushing the red bus into Alaska with the help of border patrol, Gopez says it’s the adventurous nature of the drink that continues to appeal to her.

“Kombucha is like beer but on the wild side. The rawness of our travel on the road exposed me to learning and having a different sense of appreciation for so many things about this country, like the kombucha,” she says. “It’s shaped me so much on who I am now and what kind of person I strive to be.”

• For more information, including where to find Kombucha Kat in stores, visit KombuchaKat.com.