A walkthrough of how every ETRAFLORA batch is made, from ionised water at pH 9.2 to a sealed vessel at ten atmospheres held below 45 °C. Each step, and the reason it was chosen over an easier one.
A batch of Fermentum Morning starts as beetroot, both pureed and pressed for juice, with dark grapes, dried chanterelles, garlic, bay leaf, and small quantities of wormwood and tansy. All of it goes into water that reads pH 9.2. Then the vessel is closed, and for the rest of the cycle nobody touches it.
That is the shape of every batch we make, whatever is in it. What follows is the walkthrough: what goes into the vessel, what happens once it is sealed, and why each of those choices was made instead of an easier one. The short version lives on our production page; this is the long one.
Why every batch starts with ionised water at pH 9.2
Every product begins with the same base: ionised, highly alkaline water at pH 9.2. It is the first ingredient rather than something added at the end to make up volume, and it is in the vessel before any fruit or culture arrives.
The reason is what fermentation does to pH. Cultures at work produce acids, so a ferment grows steadily more acidic as it goes, and its own acidity is eventually what slows it down. Starting from an alkaline base gives a batch a longer working window before it reaches that point. It is a brewing decision about how far a batch can travel, taken before anything else happens, which is why the pH is written into the composition of every bottle rather than left as a footnote.
Seasonal fruit, herbs, and why the range keeps changing
On top of the water go fruit and vegetable purees and freshly squeezed juices, herbs, artichoke syrup, honey and stevia leaves. Nothing is reconstituted from powder or extract, and there are no preservatives, colourings, flavourings or GMO ingredients in any of it.
The honey deserves a note, because it does not behave the way it reads on a label. It goes in as feedstock for the cultures and is consumed during the cycle; the composition on our drinks records it as absent by the time the batch is finished.
Fruit is the reason the range of drinks is not fixed. Watermelon is a summer bottle. Cherry is made while there are cherries. Tarhun leans on tarragon, and the Seasonal bottle exists precisely so that whatever is good that month has somewhere to go. Building recipes around what is actually in season means some flavours are simply unavailable for most of the year. That is a trade we accept rather than a scheduling failure.
- Ionised, highly alkaline water at pH 9.2, the base of every batch
- Seasonal fruit and vegetables, as purees and freshly pressed juices
- Herbs, artichoke syrup, honey and stevia leaves
- Live bacterial cultures, plant-based and of the Bacillus genus, including Bacillus subtilis
Which starter culture goes into the batch
The cultures go in once the water and the fruit are in place, and from that moment the work is theirs rather than ours. They are plant-based and of the Bacillus genus, including Bacillus subtilis, and we sell a starter of our own as Fermentum Concentrate, a one-litre bottle built from thirty-six ingredients. What those cultures are, biologically, is a subject of its own. For the purposes of the process it is enough to say that a batch is seeded rather than dosed, and that the seeding is the last thing a person does before the vessel is closed.
How fermented drinks are made under pressure
The sealed vessel ferments at roughly ten atmospheres. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, and in an open vat that gas leaves the liquid. Held under pressure it stays in solution instead, which is where the light sparkle in a bottle of Tarhun comes from. Nothing is carbonated afterwards and no gas is injected; the fizz belongs to the batch.
The closed vessel does a second job. For the whole cycle nothing is added, nothing is vented and no outside air passes through the batch, which removes a long list of ways a ferment can go wrong. It also means the bottle you eventually open is still holding some of that pressure. Open it slowly, with a hand on the cap until the gas has finished escaping. That is a consequence of the method, not a fault.
Why nothing goes above 45 °C
The temperature ceiling is 45 °C, held for the entire cycle, and that single number decides most of what these drinks are.
Heat is the cheapest way to make a fermented drink stable. Pasteurise a batch and it stops changing: it keeps for a year, ships at any temperature and cannot surprise anybody. It also stops being live. We do not pasteurise, so the cultures are still there in the bottle and the acids, gases and aroma compounds formed during the cycle are not cooked out of it. The cost of that decision is everything further down this page, from shelf life to insulated boxes to the testing regime. Holding below 45 °C is the reason all of it is necessary.
Small batches, filled by hand
We brew in small batches rather than continuous runs, and each batch is prepared, filled and labelled by hand. Fermentation is not a process that can be hurried towards a deadline. A batch is ready when the cycle says it is ready, and we do not cut one short to meet demand. Small batches are also what make a seasonal range practical, because changing the recipe when the fruit changes costs very little at that scale.
HACCP, and a test on every batch
Production runs under a HACCP framework, the hazard analysis system used across EU food manufacturing. In practice it means the points in the process where something could go wrong are identified in advance and monitored as you go, rather than discovered afterwards. On top of that, every batch is microbiologically tested before it is released. Not a sample of batches, each one. Certificates and per-batch reports are available on request.
The cold chain, +5 °C to +19 °C
Because the drinks are alive, temperature matters after they leave us as much as it did in the vessel. Finished bottles are held and shipped chilled, between +5 °C and +19 °C, in insulated packaging with tracked carriers, and they should go into a fridge on arrival. That window shapes how delivery is organised, at a flat €4.90 across the EU and free over €49, with timings shown at checkout before you pay, so that a parcel spends as little time in transit as it can.
What the method leaves in the bottle
A few things follow from all of this and are worth expecting. Sediment settles out and is normal; shake the bottle gently before pouring. Colour and taste shift a little from batch to batch, because the fruit does. And fermentation naturally produces a very small amount of alcohol, which is minimal in quantity and leaves the drinks classed as non-alcoholic.
None of it is elaborate. It is water chosen for where it starts, fruit chosen for the month, a culture, a sealed vessel, a temperature that is never exceeded, and a test before anything leaves the building. The only complicated part is that each of those choices closes off an easier one.