Olga Sorzano has a simple mission of making delicious, farm-to-bottle kombucha. In the ten years since she founded Baba’s Brew, the brand has bloomed, with a new boosted kombucha flavor hitting shelves, and even more new product ventures on the way.
Baba’s Brew is named after Sorzano’s grandmother, whose portrait hangs on the wall behind the bar at a Culture Factory, their Phoenixville tasting room.
To Sorzano, kombucha was the beverage she grew up with — the “magical little potion” that her grandmother would tell her to drink for minor ailments like stomach aches. Today, her kombucha offerings still follow her Baba’s “Old World” recipes, using only organic, farm-fresh ingredients.
Kombucha is a sparkling probiotic tonic made from fermented tea. The fermentation process involves adding a culture called a SCOBY — symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast — to brewed tea and sugar.
“So the end product you have is a really delicious, very low-sugar beverage that’s loaded with probiotics and enzymes and beneficial acids,” Sorzano says.
Kombucha likely originated in East Asia, spreading over time to southern Siberia, where Sorzano was born. But the beverage did not gain popularity in Europe and the United States until the early 21st century. “I literally thought everybody drinks kombucha everywhere. But when I moved from Siberia to Moscow, people were like, ‘What the heck is this thing?’”
Sorzano earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine in Moscow before moving to the United States in 2000. After some time in Nebraska, she got married and moved to Philadelphia. She then attended culinary school, where she says her current career started.
“I always approached all the cooking from the standpoint of microbiology or chemistry,” says Sorzano. “And I was always very fascinated with fermented foods.”
With this scientific interest in fermentation and a desire to eat healthier, she gained a renewed interest in the beverage of her childhood.
I told my husband as a joke, I said maybe we should make our own kombucha.”
— Olga Sorzano, Baba’s Brew
“I just couldn’t find the kombucha I really liked,” says Sorzano. “It would be either too sour or too sweet or whatever, just too much garbage. And so I told my husband as a joke, I said maybe we should make our own kombucha.”
Soon, her husband returned to her with a binder full of research, and the couple quickly had the beginnings of a kombucha business. Now, Baba’s Bucha is sold in stores across the region and on tap in their tasting room, which is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sorzano also hosts cooking classes and fermentation workshops in the space.
For Baba’s Brew, Sorzano sources as many local ingredients as possible, showing love for the region’s agriculture, and even the city’s sports.
For the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl appearance, Baba’s released a flavor called Believe, which gets its green hue from chlorophyll and is flavored with juniper berries. Other flavors include the hibiscus-flavored Ruby Sipper and Flower Power, which was inspired by rosé wine and has lavender, rose petals and tulsi basil.
“Tulsi basil is an adaptogenic herb. It gives you energy when you need it and calms you down when you need it,” Sorzano says.
Baba’s also offers an “energy-boosted” canned kombucha called Turbo Squirrel. The creation of Turbo Squirrel was inspired by Sorzano’s teenage daughters, who are avid athletes. Frustrated with the ingredient lists on many of the popular energy drink brands that her daughters consumed, Sorzano set out to make a kombucha-based alternative.
“I would read the ingredients and I’m like, this is not even for human consumption. So I would keep complaining and complaining, and they said, ‘Well, fine, just make it for us.’” Sorzano says.
Turbo Squirrel contains 100 milligrams of caffeine, derived from a combination of South American plants like guarana and yerba mate. Each can also contains functional adaptogens like cordyceps, lion’s mane and ashwagandha — the last of which is featured in a new orange vanilla flavor which was released in May.
Later this year, Baba’s is also expanding into a new market with the launch of a skincare line. Sorzano uses byproducts from brewing kombucha, like spent tea leaves and even the SCOBY itself, as ingredients in beauty products like skin masks and balms.
“We don’t just compost, but actually up-cycle it and turn it into a really phenomenal product,” says Sorzano.
Sustainability is “huge” for Baba’s, Sorzano says, especially when it comes to waste. “If you look outside, we have less trash cans than most of the households.”
On top of composting (or upcycling) all of their brewing scraps, the company is also plastic-free, selling their kombucha in resealable glass bottles and in returnable kegs.
Baba’s Brew products are available at all locations of Kimberton Whole Foods. “I love working with [them]. It’s a family business, a local business, but also, we have the same approach to sustainability.”
