How much sugar is in kombucha? The honest answer is 'it depends', because kombucha is one of the few drinks where sugar is part of how it is made, not just something poured in for taste. Let us explain, then give you the actual number for ours.
Why kombucha has sugar in the first place
Sugar is the fuel. When you ferment tea, the culture of yeast and bacteria feeds on that sugar, and in doing so creates the fizz, the tang and the live cultures. Most of what you start with gets eaten during fermentation. What is left is a small amount for balance, so the drink is not just mouth-puckeringly sour. A kombucha claiming zero sugar has usually either barely fermented or had something else do the sweetening. There is more on how the whole thing works in what is kombucha?
So how much sugar is in a Life Blood?
Three grams per 100ml, across every flavour. In a 330ml can that is just under 10g, or roughly two and a half teaspoons. For context, a regular cola is around 10g per 100ml, which puts a can of it closer to nine teaspoons. Ours is under a third of that, and the whole can comes in at 39 calories.
Is that a lot?
We will let you be the judge, because we are not here to lecture anyone about sugar. But two facts worth having. One, at 3g per 100ml we sit well under the UK sugar tax threshold of 5g, and still under the lower 4.5g level coming in 2028. Two, and this is the one we actually care about, we hit that low number using only natural ingredients, and without a single artificial sweetener. Just less sugar, and hops doing the heavy lifting on flavour.
How much sugar does fermentation actually eat?
Short answer: most of it. Brewers call this attenuation, and it is really just a before-and-after measurement. We check the sugar level of the sweet tea before the culture goes in, then check it again once fermentation is done. The gap between those two readings is how much sugar the yeast and bacteria have eaten.
A well fermented batch typically eats 70 to 85 percent of the sugar it started with. So by the time it reaches a can, most of the original sugar is long gone. Not hidden, not swapped out. Fermented away over days, the same way it has always been done.
So why isn't it zero?
Because zero would mean no flavour and no fizz. The small amount left behind is what feeds the natural carbonation and rounds out the tang. Ours lands at 3g per 100ml, and it's real sugar, not a sweetener standing in for it.
While we are here: the war on sugar
Here is the thing that quietly winds us up. Somewhere along the way sugar became the villain, and a lot of products packed with artificial sweeteners got to wear the 'healthy' badge instead. We are still not sure how that happened.
We have spent millennia evolving to handle the natural sugars in our food. Then, more or less overnight, the story became that sugar is evil and the smarter choice is a sweetener invented in a lab. Less sugar, fair enough. But swapping something your body has always known for a chemical it has never met, and calling that the healthy option, is a bit of a leap.
Whatever happened to everything in moderation? That is the whole idea here. A small amount of real sugar, nothing synthetic standing in for it, and a drink you can enjoy without doing sums. We are not anti-sugar. We are not pro-sugar. We are pro-balance.
The common-sense version
Kombucha has some sugar because that is how fermentation works. Ours has a little, 3g per 100ml, made with natural ingredients and none of it faked with sweeteners, all for 39 calories a can. Flavour first, low sugar as standard, nothing to explain on the back of the can.
Some people call that health and wellness. We call it common sense.
Questions we actually get asked
How much sugar is left in kombucha after fermentation?
Most of it is gone. A well-fermented batch eats 70 to 85 percent of its starting sugar. What remains in a Life Blood is 3g per 100ml.
What is attenuation in kombucha?
Attenuation is the percentage of sugar the culture has eaten by the time fermentation finishes. It is measured by checking the sugar level before and after.
Does all the sugar get fermented out of kombucha?
No, and it shouldn't. A small amount is left on purpose. It feeds the natural fizz and keeps the drink balanced rather than sour.
How much sugar is in a can of Life Blood?
3g per 100ml across every flavour, just under 10g in a 330ml can, for 39 calories.
Keep reading
What is kombucha?, kombucha vs soda, and the top 10 kombucha health claims, put to the test. Or just try our real kombucha for yourself.
