Can You Actually Get Drunk Off Kombucha?

In terms of beverages with a somewhat off-putting color and strange name, kombucha has been the it drink for a few years now. The fizzy tea that's rife with health benefits is made with fermented sugars and bacteria, and because of the resulting alcohol content, you actually can get carded when buying it, according to Kombucha Brewers International. However, chugging a bottle of the stuff isn't likely to get you drunk.   

The alcohol in kombucha comes from the fermentation in the tea, but the actual alcohol content is incredibly small. Like, less than 1 percent by volume small. A drink with that little alcohol isn't going to get you drunk or probably even buzzed unless you're guzzling bottle after bottle of the stuff (via Inverse). This doesn't mean people haven't tried though. (Cue poor decision in the name of science!)

Writer Jules Suzdaltsev decided to put kombucha's alcoholic properties to the test for Vice in a piece titled "I Tried to Get Drunk on Kombucha." He bought 15 bottles of the most potent stuff San Francisco had to offer, and gave getting drunk off of it a valiant effort. The flavors of "sour NyQuil" and "puddle of urine" aside, Suzdaltsev drank as much as he could but wasn't the slightest bit drunk. Even a breathalyzer test produced only a disappointing 0.01. By the time the night was over, the experiment resulted not in drunken good times, but in vomiting and bad gas.

The drink's alcohol content may not be a viable way for party monsters to get a buzz, but its alcoholic properties have raised the attention of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (via CNN). In fact, letters were sent out to numerous producers of kombucha in 2015 notifying them that their products tested over the 0.05 percent alcohol-by-volume level afforded to nonalcoholic beverages, and informing them that the level would need to come down or be labelled as an alcoholic beverage. To put that in perspective, though, 0.05 percent alcohol is only about an eighth of the alcohol content you'd get in a light beer. 

To sum things up, drinking kombucha won't get you drunk. If you drink enough of it, though, your stomach might punish you the same was it would if you spent the entire night doing shots of liquor.