Kombucha, my lord

THIS WEEK: Kombucha, Big D peanut butter, Cocktail mirrors

THING: Kombucha

Kombucha. Everyone’s drinking it! Where are you on your kombucha journey? Personally, I’m clinging by my fingernails to the front door, desperate not to go, and screaming ‘DON’T MAKE ME DRINK VINEGAR!’ as passers by exchange looks of concern.

Mmm, look at that appetising, er… drink. That reminds me, I really need to kill again and pickle a fresh spleen. My old one is looking a bit knackered.

Like AI, kombucha has been normalised, even though nobody asked us whether we wanted it the first place. It’s fermented tea full of ‘good’ bacteria, with a natural fizz that I don’t want to think too hard about, and it’s universally seen as a delicious alternative to alcohol (citation needed). It’s also great for your gut health, even though I would have thought that gut health and having a good time were two very separate things. It’s not like everyone is out there drinking Fybogel Spritzes and smuggling a couple of Rennies into Berghain, is it? Although maybe they are, what do I know?

I’m just a girl standing here, holding a:

Where was I? Oh yes, what I do know is that kombucha is weird and bad, and worse still, it’s ALIVE. I want my drinks to be thoroughly dead before I ingest them. I don’t want to imagine billions of probiotic bacteria jumping up and down on my microbiome like a trampoline. I also don’t want to think about mould. This one, from Waitrose, makes you think about mould straight away, because it comes with the caveat: ‘May contain natural floaty bits of culture. Fear not!’

Floaty culture. Like an opera singer in a hot air balloon, or a string quartet in a punt at Oxford. God, it’s insufferable. Kombucha is almost universally made by posh twats who speak like this. Also, if you have to tell people not to be afraid of your drink, it’s probably a sign to pack it in and go back to investment banking.

Still, at least that one doesn’t look like a doomed urine sample. Many trendy kombuchas come in brown bottles like cough medicine, so you can’t see all the sea monkeys floating around in it or detect the absolute grift involved in charging £5 for a half-drunk cup of tea that’s been sitting under your bed for six weeks.

But you know, different strokes for different folks. I don’t want anything to do with kombucha in the same way as I don’t want to visit Go Ape or post on Linkedin. But some people love dangling around in trees and chatting about optimising their B2B strategy, and some people also enjoy drinking mouldy tea brewed by an unshaven guy in a railway arch, and THAT IS FINE.

My friend Katrina is one of them. She loves a kombucha, so she ordered one with lunch the other day, but it didn’t go very well. I don’t even want to mention the brand as I live in an area with a high concentration of kombucha start-ups and the last thing I need is someone in a Carhartt beanie coming round in a biofuel van in the middle of the night and throwing me into a vat. All I’ll say is that the drink she ordered tasted like an expired lip balm. And the one she ordered to replace that tasted of Toilet Duck.

So basically, even if you love kombucha, it’s trying to repel you. It’s an actively horrible drink full of bacteria, with more bad attitude than a barista who is recovering from a botched septum piercing. I think I’d rather drink a pint of pickled egg juice laced with vodka. At least my microbiome would understand that.

VERDICT: Gut feeling

THING: BIG D Peanut Butter

Did you know there was a peanut butter called Big D? I didn’t. But incredibly, Big D has been going since 1967! They’re the brand behind those sexist pub nuts which hung on a board featuring a photo of a large breasted lady, revealing her bits one by one when people bought them. Sometimes I worry that I’m a bit mental, but then I realise I just grew up in an era when tits would appear when you bought peanuts. My God, why aren’t women roaming the streets armed with Kalashnikovs?

It’s okay, though, because they don’t do that anymore. Even though there’s a bulging zip on the label of this peanut butter, which is still available in the shops. No, they’re much classier now, because according to my research they rebranded in 2023 with a new label featuring sexy space ladies. However, the CEO of Big D said they’re not ladies - ‘they’re serving Barbarella with non-binary vibes’.

Hmm, double Ds still appear to be very much in evidence, but I suppose we have to accept that some progress has been made. Although perhaps the next stage of the rebrand could address the fact that the company is technically called MASSIVE DICK?

VERDICT: Micro peanut

THING: Mirrored cocktail plaques

And finally, if you’re going to style your home, I say go all in. Don’t cut corners, don’t compromise, don’t copy other people’s taste. Instead, go to B&M and spend the princely sum of £5 on these two sexy, cheap and very nasty 80s cocktail mirrors.

Are these amazing or what? I love them. They remind me of the decor in a 3 star holiday resort that subsequently appeared on Watchdog, or a club in Huddersfield called Manhattan’s. When I look at these mirrors, I imagine dancing to the Yamaha keyboard of a musical duo called Chicken and Chips, or being approached by a man in a piano tie and shiny shoes from Dolcis. To me, this all feels like the height of chic, so I’ll be putting these mirrors over my kombucha drinks trolley, right next to my Page 3 Big Dick peanuts. I bet you can’t wait to come round. Anyone fancy an Immodium Martini?

VERDICT: Colon-ial style