Nathan Hague

Welcome To Kombucha’s Number One Question!

This is a fantastic question to ask, honestly. It touches on many part of the kombucha fermentation process, and also I’m going to talk about how it fits in with Thailand law too! There’s a heap of reasons you might be asking how much alcohol is in kombucha, so let’s get straight on with the discussion.

All Kombuchas Are NOT Created Equal!

Now for the purposes of this article, let’s divide up kombucha into three separate categories, as each one will surprisingly have difference characteristics – we’ll talk about these later.

• Store brought / commercial kombucha. This is kombucha such as our KombuchaWOW brand booch, or any of the brands you can go into a 7-11, or buy from Villa Market or other grocery chains in Thailand.
• Home brewed kombucha. Yup, the one you make in your own kitchen, or where you buy from off a Facebook group, for example.
• Hard kombucha. This is alcoholic kombucha, and can range from 1 – 7% ABV which is a very strong beer’s worth of alcohol. SOOoo.. obviously this has alcohol and so I won’t cover it in this article.

Oh, by the way: ABV stands for Alcohol By Volume – we’ll be talking about this a LOT in this article as well!)

A Quick Primer On Fermentation

So before we dive into specifics of how much alcohol is in kombucha, we need to understand the basic fermentation process of all naturally-fermented drinks. This will then help us understand the answers given a bit later on down the page. Fair?

So you likely know that all kombucha starts out as a mix of tea, sugar, water and a SCOBY. The “y” in the SCOBY stands for “yeast”, and it’s working in tandem (or symbiosis – the “S” in SCOBY) with the bacteria in the SCOBY (yup, there’s the “B” too) to turn this sweetened tea mix into a delicious probiotic sparking kombucha.

The way the fermentation process works, is by the yeast consuming the sugar in the sweetened mix and giving off its byproduct as carbon dioxide and ethanol (fancy word for alcohol). Then the bacteria get to work! Members of the acetobacter family specialise in converting this ethanol into acetic acid. This gives kombucha its characteristic tangy flavour, as acetic acid is commonly known as vinegar. The process isn’t perfect, though. Not all the ethanol is converted though, leaving a small and unpredictable amount of alcohol in your home brewed kombucha. Commercial kombucha has this amount of alcohol dialled in though, so it’s far more consistent and predictable.

This alcohol rate^(PDF) can be from 0.3% up to 7% ABV (or stronger!) depending on the brewing process and subsequent storage of that kombucha batch.

Thailand Brewing Laws Now Kicks In

So I talked earlier about how Thailand laws can affect kombucha. The issue is that Thailand classes all fermented drinks under the banner of being alcoholic. It is up to the Manufacturer to seek permission from the various Thai Government departments in order to be able to sell it as a non-alcoholic drink to the General Public.

This is a pretty huge undertaking.

Kombucha brewers would need to get their kombucha tested at Government labs who then work out if you’re over the legal threshold of 0.5% ABV. If that kombucha is over the 0.5% ABV threshold, then your booch is now an alcoholic drink and is subject to a heap of Government scrutiny and bureaucracy – and associated costs!

It is EXTREMELY hard for a small craft kombucha brewer to be able to legally break into the Thailand market if their brand contains above 0.5% ABV.

Please Explain the 0.5% ABV Limit a Bit More

Yup, sure thing. All drinks sold in Thailand must be under 0.5% ABV in order to not be classed as alcoholic.

This 0.5% beverage limit is pretty standard across the world – the US, UK and Australia all require the same 0.5% level too.

To give you some perspective though on how much 0.5% ABV is, let me give you some examples of common other foods apart from Kombucha, that have naturally-occurring levels of alcohol in them. You’re going to be pretty surprised by this, I’m sure!

Foods That Contain Alcohol

• Burger rolls – up to 1.28g per 100g (1.28% ABV)
• Rye bread – up to 0.18g per 100g (0.18% ABV)
• Banana (ripe) – up to 0.2g per 100g (0.2% ABV)
• Banana (very ripe with dark bits) – up to 0.4g per 100g (0.4% ABV)
• Pear (ripe) – up to 0.04g per 100g (0.04% ABV)

Drinks That Contain Alcohol

• Kefir (made with milk) – up to 0.5g per litre (0.5% ABV)
• Kefir (made with water) – up to 1.14g per litre (1.14% ABV)
• Apple juice – up to 0.3g per litre (0.3% ABV)
• Orange juice – up to 0.73g per litre (0.73% ABV)
• Grape juice – up to 0.86g per litre (0.86% ABV)

Sauces And Condiments That Contain Alcohol

• Vinegar – around 0.3% to 0.4% ABV
• Wine vinegar – up to 1% ABV
• Kikkoman soy sauces – 1.5% – 2% ABV

For some more comparison: A single 330ml bottle of 0.05% beer contains just over 0.1g of alcohol; a 330ml bottle of 0.5% beer, about 1.3g of alcohol

Auto Brewery Syndrome

Ready to have your mind blown even more?

Scientists and medical researchers are still investigating this, but yes – your own body can make it’s own alcohol – even if you don’t drink a single drop of alcohol!

This is called Auto Brewery Syndrome, and although cited as being quite rare, it’s also thought to be quite under-reported. Amazing eh?

Can You Get Drunk Off Kombucha?

You CAN, but it’s going to be VERY hard to do on commercial store-brought kombucha such as KombuchaWOW which is around 0.3% ABV (which is LESS than the 0.5% ABV Thailand legal level!)

Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is a commonly used measure of alcohol intoxication, also known as drunkenness. It is typically expressed as a percentage of alcohol per volume of blood. For example, here in Thailand), a BAC of 0.08 (0.05%) would translate to 0.05 grams of alcohol per 100 mL of blood.

In Thailand, the legal limit for BAC when driving is 0.05%. Drivers who are over the 0.05% can face severe penalties from around THB60,000. It’s also important to note that this BAC must be ZERO for professional drivers in Thailand.

So, can you get drunk off kombucha?

Let’s do the maths!

A straightforward approach to illustrating the alcohol content of a drink is to use units of alcohol. These units are typically represented by ABV (remember by now, that stands for alcohol by volume)

The ABV of a drink is represented as a percentage of the full volume of the drink and measures how much pure alcohol it contains.

SOooo, if the total volume of a bottle of KombuchaWOW consists of 0.3% pure alcohol, it will be described as “alcohol volume 0.3%” or “0.3% ABV”.

A standard KombuchaWOW bottle is 250ml. Assuming the kombucha is 0.3% ABV, to calculate how many units of alcohol are in this single 250ml bottle, the following equation applies:

So to reach the Thailand legal limit of 0.05% BAC, you’d need to drink:

That’s 67 x 250ml bottles of KombuchaWOW to blow a fail on the Thailand police breathalyser!

This will vary depending on when you last ate, your age, weight and sex – but we’re talking you drinking 17 LITRES of kombucha IN A SINGLE HOUR before you would be over the Thailand legal driving limit.

I think we can agree, that you won’t be drinking that much kombucha in one hour. Well, at least you know you CAN drink that much one one hour, but your gut health will be telling you to run for the toilet most likely! And then don’t drive for a few hours!

What Are The Health Impacts Of Drinking Fermented Drinks That Contain Alcohol?

Well, depending on how much alcohol you’ve drunk obviously, then those health impacts are going to be down to such factors such as your age, sex, weight, health status, and tolerance to drinking.

Then there are also factors related to the drink and how it is consumed, such as the alcohol content (ABV), amount of the drink consumed, duration over which the drink is consumed, and whether food was also consumed.

As you saw above, as long as the kombucha is store-brought here in Thailand, it HAS to be under the 0.5% ABV level, so I’m pretty confident that you enjoying even 4 bottles of kombucha each day is not going to affect your health, and in fact will definitely help to increase it with the gut-friendly bacteria and amino acids found in our booch! (You’re not going to get that benefit by drinking other fermented drinks like beer, for example!)

Testing Kombucha Alcohol Content

You might be asking how do you measure kombucha alcohol content? At commercial Thailand kombucha breweries like here at KombuchaWOW, we have access to some pretty high-tech equipment. One of the most reliable methods is to use a headspace gas chromatography machine, which gives a super-accurate reading on our batches of KombuchaWOW to make sure they are always under the 0.5% ABV Thailand legal limit. Any batches that fall out of the legal limit? Well, those batches are destroyed and never sold to the public.

Does Kombucha Have Alcohol?

Yes, kombucha does contain trace amounts of alcohol as with all fermented beverages.

The difference here is with store-brought kombucha such as KombuchaWOW Vs Homebrewed.

Home brewed kombucha will DEFINITELY have alcohol in it, whereas commercial kombucha won’t have a high enough alcohol content to matter for anyone drinking a few bottles per day.

I hope I have explained in detail in this article and that it’s been a bit of eye-opener, eh? The part about how much alcohol is in kombucha being dependant on if it’s store-brought like our KombuchaWOW, or if you’ve brought from a home brewer (or you’re making it at home), and how it can be as high as a very strong beer! Or how you’d have to drink around 17 LITRES of kombucha to be over the legal Thai driving limit of 0.05% BAC.

As always, message Alice or I over on our socials – we’re on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. And if you post your pics of you and our booch, tag with #kombuchawow so we can see them! You never know – you might wake up with a load of freebies in your inbox if we like your pics!

Peace out and booch on!

Nate