Page 15 - EUREKA Winter 2017

Carleton microbiologist Myron Smith is helping Ottawa’s Buchipop gear up for growth.

The kombucha project

Understanding the fermented tea drink’s microbial mix

is the key to a consistent product

ts fiercest advocates claim that drinking kombucha can the local, the drink’s
Ihelp address a dizzying array of health problems, from dia- regional specificity
betes to a weak libido, but Ottawa’s Buchipop isn’t brewing is a marketing asset,
the fermented, fizzy tea-based beverage as a folk remedy — but a challenge to
they want to bring it to the soda-swilling masses. growth. To expand,
“Our focus isn’t really on the health side,” says Patricia Buchipop needs to
Larkin, who started the company in early 2016 after five produce consistent
years as a chef at one of the city’s top bistros. “That’s part kombucha on a large
of who drinks kombucha, but we want soda drinkers to love scale, and a dynamic
it too. I see us as a lifestyle brand. An alternative to soda, production process
with health benefits.” with unknown micro-
Kombucha traces its lineage back two millennia to ancient bial components presents a hurdle to consistency.
Manchuria, but despite this pedigree, little is known about ex- Smith’s lab in the Nesbitt Biology Building is sequencing
actly what it is. That’s because of kombucha’s microbial com- the DNA in Buchipop’s symbiotic community of bacteria and
plexity. Drinks such as wine and beer ferment a single yeast, yeast using a high throughput sequencer. By examining the
but kombucha relies on a symbiotic community of bacteria metagenome — the genome of the entire community — the
and yeast in a complex fermentation process that produces lab can identify microbial DNA to determine the proportion
an alcohol content of less than one perfect, similar to many of a particular species in the mix, and identify exactly which
other foods and beverages. To complicate matters, it uses an components are present at each stage of fermentation. “You
open system that allows external microbes to become part of can imagine a pie chart that says 10 percent of the cells are
that community, contributing unique local flavours. from this bacterium, and 20 percent from this yeast,” Smith
“You don’t try to keep it clean of environmentally intro- says. “Then a week later, you can see how that community
duced microbes,” says Carleton microbiologist Myron Smith, has changed.”
a genetics expert whose lab is working with Buchipop on a Understanding what is happening as kombucha ferments
research project. “Different regions have different microbes. could enable Buchipop to better manage flavours in the end
So there won’t be the same species, or the same strain, but product, and achieve the consistency the growing company
there will be something that lives well in a region that does needs to expand beyond the roughly 40 local restaurants
the same job.” currently selling its products.
With global sales forecast to climb 25 percent every year “I’m very proud to be an Ottawa company,” says Larkin,
until 2020, kombucha is a growing segment in a crowded “but I’d like to be an Ottawa export. For Buchipop, this is
beverage industry. In a food culture increasingly driven by just the beginning.” — Tyrone Burke

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