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an occasional blog of
​people + places   |   eats + things

a new brewery 'teas' up in athens

8/6/2019

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Kombucha, a probiotic fermented tea, has a distinctively tart taste. It contains a negligible amount of alcohol, and can be enjoyed alone or in cocktails and mocktails. The beverage isn’t new, but it’s only beginning to gain traction in the Classic City thanks to Erika Galloway and Jason Dean, co-founders of Figment.

“Budweiser is not like a pastry stout, and there’s that much variety in kombucha, too. Some are really crazy vinegary, some are super-carbonated, some are light, some are heavily flavored,” Dean said. 
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Figment kombucha is available by the glass or in growlers, which are a glass jug-style vessel. Unlike beer in growlers, live-cultured kombucha will continue to naturally carbonate inside the container, allowing it to stay crisp and drinkable longer.
The brewery’s core flavors are ginger, lemongrass and turmeric; rosé; and blueberry-lavender. Seasonal flavors this year included mango-chile-lime and jasmine mojito, and upcoming flavors for fall and winter will play with apples, spruce tips, cinnamon and barrel aging. It was the blueberry-lavender that first came together and gave Dean the vision for what his bottle shop kombucha program could grow into.

Dean and Galloway met working at a local bottle and homebrew shop. A manager there had been making kombucha, and Dean was approached about taking over the project.

“We saw the clientele in the business kind of grow and we thought, you know what, there’s no kombucha brewery in Athens. It’s ridiculous and we should have one,” he said. 

Eventually the partnership broke away from the bottle shop and became its own entity, named 
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Figment co-founder Erika Galloway pours a cup of mango-chile-lime kombucha at the Baxter Street taproom.
after the beer brewery Dean originally planned to start.
​
“It costs a lot less to get into kombucha. There’s a lot less barrier in entry into market. There’s a lot of potential there, so I thought it’d be better to go that direction than spend $2 million on a brewery that may or may not make it,” he said. “I just liked the fact that [Figment] is a name that’s kind of strange and doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone specifically, and it’s kind of an ethereal word that anyone could bring their own meaning to.”
>> from figment of imagination to reality

Kombucha is fermented by a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast — also known as a SCOBY. SCOBYs tend to look like flat discs or mushrooms that take hold at the top of a container as the bacteria and yeast huddle together and create a physical form. The SCOBY, along with additional “starter liquid” that contains the bacteria and yeast, is added to water, sugar and tea to get the process going. When Galloway first became interested in kombucha, she read online that it was possible to purchase a container of GT’s plain kombucha, and as long as it had a small piece of SCOBY in the bottom, it could be cultivated into a larger colony. 
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SCOBYs, or symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, and starter liquid are what ferment tea into Figment kombucha. Here, SCOBYs sit and wait to be utilized in the fermenting process.
Galloway and Dean have produced starter liquid so strong that they no longer add the physical SCOBY to their brews. 

It takes anywhere from 10 to 30 days to finish a batch of kombucha, depending on the amount being produced. After a period of primary fermentation, where the unflavored tea reaches the appropriate sourness and yeast turns the sugar to alcohol, the SCOBY and starter are removed, and what’s left is flavored and undergoes a secondary fermentation process. During secondary fermentation, kombucha naturally carbonates itself as the bacteria digest the alcohol. Figment’s owners also chose to add additional carbonation at the end to ensure product consistency. All in all, brewing kombucha isn’t much different from brewing beer.

“It’s still the same principle and it’s based off of that because both [Dean] and I were into beer,” she said. “All the equipment that you use is the same as if you were brewing beer. We have to use a hot water pot, which is the hot liquor tank for boiling water. We steep, which is the same thing as using your mash tun with your grains. Then we add the additional sugar once you take the tea out and we cool it down, so you’re still chilling it like you would with beer, and then we go into fermentation.”
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Figment’s owners prefer to use a blend of black and green teas for their kombucha. Galloway said white tea also works well, but the main thing is to ensure the tea is caffeinated: “Your bacteria need the caffeine for an energy source.”
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Enjoying a spicy version of mango-chile-lime kombucha at the taproom.
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A glimpse inside the Baxter Street taproom where Figment is brewed and served.
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Co-founder Erika Galloway holds a handful of tea — the heart of kombucha, if you will.
>> farm-fresh focus

Dean said Figment’s focus is on taking advantage of the seasons and fresh, local ingredients as often as possible.

“It’s going to be a little more time-intensive and expensive to use seasonal, local ingredients, but I think it’s better for the economy. It’s better for the farmers,” Dean said. “It’s going to taste better; it’s going to be more interesting. There’s a story behind it.”
​
Farmers markets play an integral role in Figment’s business model. Not only are they a way to source raw materials, but the exposure there has been unparalleled. 
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Co-founder Jason Dean serves up a cup of kombucha at the Saturday morning Athens Farmers Market at Bishop Park.
“The market’s been awesome,” Dean said. “It’s a great way to be able to sell without having to pay a distributor, pay a retailer. It’s all just whatever you bring yourself, you make yourself, you get all the money and get it in front of everyone who shows up there, which is a lot of people.”

He said originally the Athens Farmers Market was supposed to serve as supplemental income and be an exposure point, but the two quickly realized it was a vital part of their business plan. 

“It’s kind of a thing we can count on to make rent every month,” Dean said. “There’s still a lot of people who’ve never even heard of [kombucha], surprisingly. I think we’re getting there and part of our job is just, at these markets, is to educate people and let them taste it."
He wants to look at kombucha brewing more from a restaurant focus.

“I’m very influenced by kind of culinary things,” Dean said. “I like to think of brewing, even beer brewing, as it cooking. You’re thinking of ingredients and how those ingredients go together and not necessarily like, what’s going to sell or what are kind of popular flavors that everybody else is doing. I want to think of different things you don’t see on the shelf.”

The two found out the hard way that there are some flavors harder to capture than others. Ambrosia — coconut, pineapple and cherry — didn’t turn out so well, and neither did root beer.

“We thought we’d make a full-on natural one using the roots and trying to duplicate the flavor of root beer, but it just tasted like roots,” Dean said.
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Galloway agreed, saying it was one of those things you might taste and ask if there are supposed to be health benefits from.
There are some purported probiotic benefits from kombucha, but it doesn’t have to taste funky for that to be the case. Probiotics are “live microorganisms that are intended to have health benefits,” per the National Institutes of Health. Yogurt, supplements and fermented foods — like kombucha! — are ways to add probiotics such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium bacteria and Saccharomyces boulardii yeast to the diet. According to an August 2018 piece from Harvard Medical School, clinical studies suggest that “probiotic therapy” can aid in gastrointestinal issues, 
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Kombucha batches "cook" in the back area of Figment's taproom.
allergies and treating vaginal and urinary tract infections.

However, NIH cautions, “benefits have not been conclusively demonstrated, and not all probiotics have the same effects.”

“There’s a lot of argument as to what exactly is probiotic and what these things are really doing inside your body and how they really work,” Dean said. “It’s just now, surprisingly, starting to be studied. This thing that has been done for thousands of years is still not fully scientifically understood, like, what does happen to kombucha in the actual gut and what’s specifically going on here? Right now we’re just still kind of going on anecdotal evidence that people feel better.”

The NIH piece goes on to say that “strong scientific evidence” to support probiotic use for most health conditions is lacking, and the US Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved any probiotics for preventing or treating health problems.
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Cocktails made with blueberry-lavender kombucha, photographed at The Old Pal in Athens, Georgia.
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A cocktail made with ginger-lemongrass-turmeric kombucha, photographed at Trappeze Pub in Athens, Georgia.
​>> brewing the kombucha culture

Figment’s owners hope to see their reach — and perhaps health benefits — expand to bottles or cans by the end of this fiscal year.

Both said the most challenging part of their brewery is that they are its only two employees: they brainstorm and brew; they clean; they work the two market days each week, plus other area events; they run the taproom on Baxter Street. And that’s not even going into the bookkeeping, paperwork and other day-to-day business tasks.

They’re up to the task, and though lacking in sleep at the moment, are excited for the opportunities they have coming up. Figment was given a coveted spot at music, arts and rustic lifestyle weekend Wildwood Revival this September.

“Oh, it’s huge,” Galloway said of being part of Wildwood. “It’s our demographic of customers that actually go there because they’re interested in those small, handcrafted artisan products.”
​
Recently Figment partnered with Georgia-based beverage distributor Modern Hops, meaning even more Peach State foodies will have access to the drink this year.
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“My goal, anyway, is to market the best kombucha in the world. It seems crazy in a place that’s on Baxter Street in a little plaza building, but we’ll get there,” Dean said. “Whether we grow into the big brewery or not remains to be seen, but I think that follows just being the best product rather than growing and putting something out that I’m not necessarily proud of. The growth will happen naturally if the product is sought after and good.”

<< drink up >> 
Figment kombucha is available for purchase by the glass or in growlers at its Baxter Street taproom, at the Saturday morning Athens Farmers Market and the Wednesday afternoon farmers market at Creature Comforts. It is also available in select breweries and restaurants in the Athens, Greensboro and metro Atlanta areas.
Follow the brewery on Facebook + Instagram.
​
Disclosure:​ The cocktail photos in this piece were part of a separate, paid project. This story and other images were of my own volition.
Georgia’s full of locally owned businesses. Which one should be featured next?
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