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Beekeeper Claire Tolley, owner of Cridling, has launched the series of Kombucha drinks after creating what she describes as ‘the perfect brew’ following four years of development.

In 2018, Claire began researching ways to improve her health which is how she stumbled onto kombucha.

Kombucha is a fermented sweetened tea drink which comes from South East Asia and is drunk for its purported health benefits. Due to the fermentation process, the drink contains traces of alcohol but with less than a quarter of a unit of booze, it is considered to be a low-alcoholic drink.

Just the buzziness: Beekeeper Claire Tolley has produced a series of low-alcohol kombucha health drinks with honey from her own hives for her Knottingley micro-brewery Cridling.

Claire said: “Cridling came about five years ago when I started looking into my health. I researched how your entire body’s health is regulated by the microbiomes in your gut.

"Research has shown that gut microbiomes not only help you digest food, but also may support the immune system and heart.

“When I was doing my investigation, Kombucha kept cropping up, so I started researching it and after a while, I thought I could brew that.”

When she first started out, Claire was using sugar as the sweetener in the brew – one of the main ingredients – but one day she thought about adding honey instead.

Cridling is brewed in a micro brewery on a farm in Knottingley.

And now the environmentally-friendly entrepreneur uses honey from her own bee hives as well as honey from other keepers in the area to give the drink its sweet taste.

"When I started brewing the drink, I’ve got to be honest, it was horrendous. It was quite vingery and I couldn’t get anybody to drink it!,” Claire added.

"But I persisted and tried a few different fermentation processes. After a while, I thought I would try adding honey and that is when the drink changed. I should have thought about using honey sooner, really, as I am a beekeeper.

"And before I knew it, I had the most amazing drink and my friends and family started drinking it, and noticing they were starting to feel better in themselves."

Knottingley beekeeper Claire Tolley, owner of Cridling.

As the honey is from her bees and other local hives, each batch of the drink may taste slightly different.

"We’re not Coca-Cola, the drink is brewed right here from my micro-brewery on the farm, and each batch may have a slight variation in taste due to using honey from different hives or seasons,” Claire added.

The drink has been trademarked and Claire hires an employee to help brew, can, and ship the drinks from her micro brewery on her farm in Knottingley, near Wakefield.

And it is not just a health drink, it can be drunk as a low-alcohol alternative as well as being added to gin and other spirits to create a healthy cocktail.

Entrepreneur Claire Tolley uses honey from her own bee hives as well as honey from other beekeepers in the area to give her Cridling kombucha drinks their sweet taste. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Claire added: “Cridling is a great social drink, it goes great with vodka and gin and once you’ve tried the raspberry flavour with Prosecco, there is no going back.”

There are currently four flavours in the range, raspberry, blueberry, lemon and ginger, and dark fruits.

For more information or to purchase the drink, visit: https://www.cridling.co.uk/shop

Beekeeping Knottingley brewer is hoping for sweet taste of success after developing new mead kombucha health drink