What's in Brewch

Natural Flavors are made by extracting and combining the specific compounds like esters, essential oils, and oleoresins that make a smell. This is an artform that goes back thousands of years with roots in the ancient art of perfumery. But now we use sophisticated lab tools to measure, match and make the flavoring.

Unlike a concentrated spice powder or fruit juice purée that contains all of the sugars and flavors into a smaller space, a liquid flavor concentrate builds from the blocks that make a flavor distinct, and then balances them in a highly concentrated liquid solvent like alcohol or water. 

When compared to a juice concentrate, a Brewch Flavor concentrate just contains the flavoring molecules and enough liquid for them to mix with. You get the same or better flavor profile, and none of the extra variables like sugars, water and pulps. The quality is controlled in each batch to make it the same flavor and potency every time.

Sometimes there is no difference, and it’s just paperwork. Not every flavoring compound can be made from an organic sources because there is not an organic source with the proper pedigree available. For example, it might be easy to source organic lemon and lavender compounds from farms in the United States, but not possible to find an organic passion fruit with the same organic services verification from Brazil.

Organic flavors are a subset of natural flavors that are made the same way, but from ingredients that have the proper paperwork.

That means that there are multiple sources of compounds being used to make a flavor, not just the named flavor. For example, a strawberry flavor might need some extracts from a rose flower in order to make it stand out with “WOW!” Or a tropical flavor like pink guava might be stronger with a little citrus top note derived from a grapefruit essence.  In both cases, the main flavor is the star and appears in the name, but it burns brighter because it is getting fueled by some helpful extracts that have a potent, and related flavor profile. These flavors are labeled as such, “with other natural flavors.”

Generally, the ingredients label on a product made with Brewch should read in order of amount from highest to lowest and say “natural flavoring.”  For example if you make kombucha from a continuously brewing SCOBY concentrate like Manna-K, your ingredients will say something like “Contains: Green Tea, Kombucha culture, Sugar, Natural Flavoring.”