http://www.synergydrinks.com/

Does anyone know how legitimate this is? A friend of mine says it makes him feel better throughout the day, but is that just a placebo effect? Or is there something to it? Hoping to get some answers from someone more informed than myself.

I love the stuff. Been drinking it for years. Don't really know if the medicinal claims are true - but I feel great afterwards and it tastes great.

Ditto. Who knows how beneficial (or harmful) it actually is, but GT Dave makes one helluva product. I'm partial to the gingerberry, and am always a little extra excited when I pick out a particularly phlegmmy one!

It's a decent source of probiotics so that will help you with digestion for a while after drinking it. I love kombucha, especially the gingerberry like Art! I've tried brewing my own at home, but it's NEVER as good as the synergy!

According to some book about kombucha I read 6 years ago or so before brewing massive amounts of it, it is basically vinegar culture grown on sweetened tea. Both tea and vinegar have been considered medicinal and used as a general tonic for thousands of years. Billions of people over thousands of years are probably onto something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar#Medical_uses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea

PS you can brew your own by buying kombucha with live cultures in it and adding it to as sterile as possible heavily sweetened tea. Store it in a cool dry place with cheese cloth over the opening and a cellulose mat should form over the surface of the tea. This is the kombucha mother aka mother of vinegar. let the juice ferment to taste and then add one cup of it and the mat to the next batch and repeat.

i dont drink it very often anymore, but i enjoy it when i do

warning to anyone about to try it: just don't be a moaron like me and shake before opening! (while driving, no less)

I used to drink this stuff all the time! It was delicious and it did make me feel great.

However, when they took the product off the shelves, and then replaced it with the "non-alcoholic" version, it went bust IMO. Now it just tastes like vinegar with a hint of whatever flavor it is labeled. Truly a sad story.

Most kombucha has some alcohol in it, depending on how anaerobic the fermentation was. The usual process is anaerobic fermentation of sugars to ethanol, then aerobic fermentation of ethanol to acetic acid. The problem commercial producers were having is that the fermentation would continue after bottling and the subsequently produced ethanol was not converted to acetic acid. I'm not sure what the commercial companies did to prevent this from happening. I'm guessing they either killed the culture to prevent fermentation, or let most of the sugars get fermented all the way to vinegar before bottling. Anyways, its so easy to make; if you want slightly alcoholic fizzy kombucha just get a big jar and go to town.