06/23/2026
Good morning!
As some of you have noticed, I’ve stopped making Solas Kombucha.
It was a good run. To be completely honest, I wish I could share some of the new flavours I’ve been making for myself at home, but alas, running a small business took a LOT out of me. I’m proud of what we built, though, and incredibly grateful to everyone who supported Solas over the years, especially during the pandemic. You kept us going when things were pretty wild.
For anyone who's been messaging to ask: yes, Solas is officially no more.
The good news is that Dr. Kombu Brewing Co.'s Jay Hildybrant is still making Black Cat Mead, which is available at Chain Yard Taproom, so not everything we produced has disappeared.
I’ll be shutting down this page soon, but before I do, I wanted to say thank you one more time and answer the question that keeps popping up in my inbox.
One thing I’d still love to encourage everyone to do is buy local whenever you can. If you're looking for kombucha, I highly recommend Goodmore Kombucha out of Dartmouth.
After the pandemic, consumer habits shifted, which is completely understandable. People were watching their grocery budgets, and at the same time a flood of shelf-stable "kombucha" products appeared on store shelves. They're cheaper to make, so they're cheaper to buy, but many are pasteurized.
Now, if you enjoy them for the flavour, by all means, drink what makes you happy. But if you're buying kombucha for the live cultures and fermentation benefits, pasteurization removes all of that. In my opinion, it also takes away the freshness and complexity that make kombucha special in the first place.
So if you're looking for the real thing, support a local Canadian producer. And if you can't find one nearby, Rise is widely available and Canadian-owned.
Thanks again for all the support, the conversations, the market visits, and the chance to spend so many years making weird fermented beverages for a living. It meant a lot.
