Adam and Sonia Gallegos moved to Ojai with plans to open a craft brewery. Yet throughout Adam’s beer-making studies, his wife was brewing kombucha. “After moving here, we began living a healthier lifestyle, and I wanted to do something that was really good for people,” he says.

So beer was out, and jun kombucha was in.

The couple recently opened Revel kombucha brewery and tasting room to feature jun kombucha, a fermented beverage whose SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) thrives on green tea and honey. (Usually, kombucha is made with black tea and sugar.)

The result is a light, crisp, sparkling beverage seasoned with ingredients from the Ojai Certified Farmers’ Market and Ojai’s Heavenly Honey. “It’s a flavor that captured our hearts,” says Gallegos.

In Revel’s bright, modern tasting room behind the Ojai Arcade, patrons can belly up to the quartz bar and order a tasting flight from seven seasonally rotating taps. They serve tea, cold-brew coffee, acai bowls and snacks from Ojai’s Thacher Road Cookies and Lark Ellen Farm. People can also take home jars of Sonia’s small-batch kimchi, based on a recipe perfected by her family in South Korea.

Although Gallegos is hesitant to make health claims about their beverages, he credits jun with curing his acid reflux and says lab tests confirm the jun’s probiotic count is “through the roof.” Delicious and good for you—what an encouraging start to a new year.
 

Revel
307 E. Matilija St., Ojai
805-272-0028; Revel365.com