Rising to the kombucha bottling challenge

RISE Kombucha jumped on the sparkling fermented beverage trend in 2009, selling its product primarily in vegan restaurants.

Even as sales exploded, operations were still entirely manual. As late as 2017, the company had 40 employees bottling the fermented tea beverage by hand. Then the decision was made to expand production capacity and automate the process. Thanks to more than CA$10 million (AU$10.2 million) in growth capital, RISE Kombucha was able to build a new kombucha production facility, which features a Krones filling line.

A new twist on an age-old tea beverage

Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage thought to have originated in China more than 2000 years ago. Brewing it starts with the kombucha culture, which is called a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). RISE Kombucha likes to refer to its SCOBY as ‘mother’. This mother is a yellowish-brown gelatinous pancake whose yeasts metabolise freshly brewed, sweetened tea into alcohol and carbon dioxide (carbonation) through oxidation. The bacteria then convert the alcohol into organic acids, which give the drink its signature tart-sweet flavour. Kombucha generally contains up to five grams of sugar and between 0.5 and 2% alc/vol.

RISE produces its product in 25,000 L batches.

“Good kombucha can’t be pasteurised. It has to be alive when it reaches the consumer,” said Axel Kalbarczyk, President of RISE Kombucha.

“We are one of the few producers that can accomplish this and ensure that the alcohol content stays below 0.5% alc/vol, which we do through a proprietary process. We keep it below 0.5% as the laws vary across Canada.”

According to Bottling and Sanitation Director Jocelyn Malo, kombucha behaves similarly to beer during filling.

“Just the pH value is somewhat lower, at 3.0 to 3.5, and the residual sugar is a bit higher. It foams during the filling process, so you must continually monitor pressure and CO₂ content. We bottle it cold, at about 2°C,” he said.

The kombucha must be distributed chilled since fermentation does not stop until it hits 4°C.

“Cleaning and sanitisation are also extremely important since it’s a live product and secondary contamination can be dangerous.”

The filling line

Krones delivered the entire wet end of the new line, which is designed to handle 21,000 bottles per hour. RISE was one of Krones’ first kombucha customers — but the broad House of Krones portfolio made it possible to quickly find a suitable solution for filling.

RISE installed an Autocol labeller upstream of the filler, which applies self-adhesive labels to the empty bottles since condensation on the cold-filled bottles would make later labelling difficult.

The Krones Autocol.

RISE also installed a 55-valve Modulfill HRS short-tube filler — a glass bottle filler with a vent tube and mechanical filling system. The Modulfill helps achieve low-oxygen filling, which is essential to the process of safely bottling kombucha.

The Krones Modulfill.

The Modulfill HRS is linked in a bloc with a Moduljet rinser, which cleans the new glass bottles prior to filling. A Checkmat FM-X checks the fill level.

The entire bloc is housed in a cleanroom to keep the filling process separate from the rest of the production environment, improving hygiene.

The line fills the different kombucha varieties into 414 mL and 1 L glass bottles, which have a cylindrical form and minimalistic label design to make them easily recognisable.

Staff were also given intensive training to ensure that each of the four operators per shift could handle every machine.

Malo said the effect is clear at changeovers.

“We are averaging around 90% efficiency on the 1 L bottle. The line currently runs one-day shifts five days a week and is cleaned each night. Meanwhile, the kombucha brewers work seven days a week to produce the fermented beverage.”

Kombucha on trend

The growing demand for kombucha has been driven in part by the vegan food movement and increased awareness of health and nutrition. RISE Kombucha uses fresh, organic ingredients, which include everything from the teas (herbal, green and black) to the sugar and the flavorings (eg, ginger, rosemary, elderflower, lychee and jasmine). The company currently has eight different flavour varieties and two seasonal brews. In 2020 it launched a new product line called 1g, which contains just one gram of sugar per serving.