Renew

So, adaptogens and adaptogenic beverages are huge right now. It was really only a matter of time before a bigger kombucha brand put out an adaptogenic line, so I didn’t even bat an eye when I saw RISE had released a full product assortment of sparkling adaptogen beverages this year. RISE is a good brand and I like their products a lot; they’re flavour forward but still have the healthful kombucha funk that I want. I was sure that they would nail this assortment…

I don’t think they did.

To be fair, I have not yet tried the whole product line up. However, based on the two I had this past week it’s not looking promising. There have definitely been RISE flavours, like their Ginger, that I knew were decidedly not the flavours for me. However, I’ve been able to see and understand why people like them. I kind of just think this is just gross though, and I cannot really see an element of it that could be “justifiably good”.

For starters, the kombucha itself smells strongly like coffee. Now, it’s supposed to be “Coffee Caramel” flavoured so at least it’s accurate. However, the smell of coffee and vinegar together!? Oh boy is it pungent and weird. It was not looking good. The taste is not better. There’s just so many intense flavours going on and it comes off as horribly busy, intense, and non-cohesive. I taste roasted dark coffee, sour acidic orange, cloying “fake caramel”, vinegar…

And all of that is aggresively fermented and bubbly. It’s just bad. Couldn’t finish the bottle of this one…