by Westfair Business Publications

September 23, 2018

The kombucha craze is continuing apace, and a Danbury couple is hoping to capitalize upon it by opening Cross Culture Kombucha at 52 Division St.

Officially opened on Sept. 20, the seeds for Cross Culture began about six years ago, according to Ian Ceppos, who founded the company with his wife, Liz.

“I got sober nine years ago,” he said. “About three years into my sobriety I was looking for something to drink besides seltzer water. I was never really into sugary sodas and juices, because I wanted to stay with something healthy.”

Around that time Liz’s brother showed up at the Cepposes’ home with a couple of bottles of home-brewed kombucha. “That was my first real introduction to it and I thought it was really good,” he said.

Ceppos began brewing his own at home and when Liz began considering a career change in 2016 — she’d been a project manager, most recently at Argyle Project Management in Norwalk — the pair began researching the idea of opening a kombucha taproom. Although such establishments can be found around the country, Cross Culture is the first in the Nutmeg State.

For the uninitiated, kombucha is tea, usually brewed with sugar and additional flavorings, then fermented with a kombucha culture known as “SCOBY” (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast); the end result includes several organic acids, carbon dioxide that adds fizziness and a trace amount of alcohol.

read more here