Have you ever tried Magnolia flower kombucha?
Spring has sprung and with it comes an abundance of Magnolias!
I do love a yearly foraging and harvesting tradition, and our magnolia flower event is one of my favourites! For the third year running, we have once again taken the trip over to Shottenden to the garden of local legend, Geoffrey Neame, who has two gloriously massive and untamed Magnolia Trees and very kindly allows us to harvest their beautiful blooms! Fuelled by our very own KPA kombucha, we applied our very best hunter-gatherer instincts and got to work!
With one of the closest genetic relations being the buttercup, it is no wonder that the Magnolia is the perfect marker for the start of spring. The history of the magnolia tree dates back millions and millions of years, back to the prehistoric age, and is one of the oldest species of flowering tree (that’s pretty amazing right?).
We time our harvest so that we pick the flowers just after they start blossoming, as that’s precisely when the flavour and the aromas of the Magnolia are at their peak! After a long and successful day of picking we managed to come away with 8kg of Magnolia flowers, and even then we hadn’t even made a dent in the amount of flowers on the tree–they’re so incredibly abundant, and some are just so high up we can’t reach!
Once back at the brewery the flowers are steeped to extract their complex flavour profiles, much like a giant batch of herbal tea! The raw flowers themselves are edible and when eaten have a very gingery, bitter and clove-ish flavour. During the steeping, the brewery becomes filled with this wonderfully heady aroma that combines intricate rose and cardamom notes–a nexus for the start of spring!
Finally, the giant batch of tea is separated into our famous glass jars and carefully fermented to make our star-of-the-show Magnolia flower kombucha. The fermentation process organically brings out the final umami, vanilla and delicate smoked sage flavours, resulting in a booch that is deliciously creamy and dessert wine-like!
Very reminiscent of a cream soda on a sunny day!
I would recommend getting your hands on the Magnolia flower booch ASAP, I have a feeling it’s going to be a very popular one this year! You can find it here, and it will be sent out in all mixed cases that include seasonal flavours - whilst stocks last!