What is Cayo's?
It’s a kombucha room, a teahouse, a café, a bar, or just a place to hang out and enjoy exploring kombucha. Born in Cayo Hueso and inspired by Cayito the Booch hound.
Cayo’s bringing you the best of organic, hand-picked, small batch, raw and locally sourced kombucha. We are committed to offering you environmentally friendly ways to drink kombucha and to support local brewers and businesses.
We invite you to visit, sample, fill reusable bottles with delicious kombucha, inspire your friends and family to try a healthy, alcohol-alternative beverage, and return again and again to refill, and explore new flavors..
What is Kombucha?
Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage. It is made by adding a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) to a solution of tea and sugar. During the course of the fermentation process, the cultures metabolize the sugar and tea components to render a naturally carbonated beverage, with a slightly sweet-tart flavor, full of healthy components like B vitamins, organic acids, antioxidants, and trace amounts of alcohol.
During the first part of the fermentation process the yeasts – mainly Brettanomyces along with Saccharomyces and Zygosaccharomyces – consumes the sugars and leaves CO2 and Alcohol as metabolites. The bacteria in the SCOBY – Acetobacter, Lactobacillus and Gluconacetobacter are the main species – then consumes the alcohol and leaves a range of organic acids as metabolites.
History of Kombucha
This functional beverage has its origin in eastern Asia about 2,500 years ago. Kombucha originated in Northeast China (historically referred to as Manchuria) around 220 B.C. and was initially prized for its healing properties. Its name is reportedly derived from Dr. Kombu, a Korean physician who brought the fermented tea to Japan as a curative for Emperor Inkyo. Eventually the tea was brought to Europe as a result of trade route expansions in the early 20th century, most notably appearing in Russia (as “Kambucha”) and Germany (as “Kombuchaschwamm”).
But, Kombucha is much more than just a fermented tea product. It is a lifestyle, or at least, a life choice that many people note as life changing on some level. Most people start drinking Kombucha because it makes them feel good and many experience an improvement in health; unfortunately formal research is scarce.