Team:Austin UTexas/Human Practices
Because Kombucha is made of various strains of bacteria, there are a lot of possible synthetic biology applications to alter its properties to make it a designer beverage. This includes things such as ____.
The Kombucha industry is big in Austin with a variety of local brands including Buddha’s Brew, Wunder-Pilz, Kosmic Kombucha, and K-Tonic. We met with Greg Goodman, founder of K-Tonic, to discuss the Kombucha industry and potential issues we could solve using synthetic biology. He discussed the ethanol production process in Kombucha and how it is challenging to control the content. The yeast in Kombucha produce ethanol as a part of the fermentation process. Most Kombucha however is sold as a non-alcoholic beverage for which the alcohol content cannot exceed 0.5%. Ethanol content increases over time as the yeast continues to ferment the drink and thus Kombucha doesn’t have a very long shelf life. We are working on combating this problem by increasing the rate at which the bacteria in the Kombucha convert the ethanol to acetic acid.
