Seasonal Honeysuckle Kefir Soda Now on Tap!

HONEYSUCKLE KEFIR: Our farm’s first seasonal taste of Spring is now on tap! Half Hill Farm’s Honeysuckle water kefir soda is a trip through childhood memories – made with farm foraged honeysuckle and a kiss of local honey in our probiotic water kefir soda. It’s an annual favorite that never lasts long. Stop by our stores listed below and get it by the 16 oz cup or 64 oz growler refill!

Root Beer Kefir – our latest water kefir soda!

ROOT BEER: It smells so amazing in the kitchen when the herbs are slow simmering for the Root Beer! Our newest water kefir flavor is a unique remake of a classic American craft soda with all organic sarsaparilla, ginger, star anise, birch bark, wild cherry bark, wintergreen in a probiotic water kefir soda. It’s one of several craft kefir sodas we make that’s on tap and available now by the cup or growler exclusively at the following locations:

Half Hill Farm to open fourth retail store in Jackson, TN!

HEY JACKSON: We’ve been quietly working on a very special place to bring you Half Hill Farm’s brand of better health & well being! The Wellness Emporium of Jackson will be our farm’s fourth retail store and is located at 2046 Pleasant Plains Extension, Suite G Jackson, Tennessee 38305.

The Wellness Emporium will feature a few of the products we make (kombucha & kefir fermented to perfection on tap or by the bottle, apple cider vinegar tonics, mushroom extracts, tinctures, elixirs, teas and more) plus other items that promote better health & well being. We hope to be open in June.

Help us spread the word. Follow us on Facebook or on Instagram: @jxwellness. We can’t wait to share our love with you starting later this month!

Half Hill Farm’s Kombucha and Kefir now on tap at The Turnip Truck

HEY NASHVILLE: We are excited to announce you can now get four flavors of Half Hill Farm’s kombucha and kefir on tap exclusively at The Turnip Truck Natural Market! Our Blood Orange, Elderberry, Tart Cherry and Ginger Lemonade are fermented to perfection and made with all organic ingredients in neighboring Woodbury, TN – now available by the growler at your favorite natural & local grocery store!

Ginger Beet Water Kefir Shrub now at Harvest Local Foods

HEY MANCHESTER: You can now find our farm’s Ginger Beet Water Kefir Shrub at Harvest Local Foods (101 N. Irwin St. Manchester, Tennessee 37355) with our other flavors of kombucha and kefir! Harvest Local Foods is one of our favorite places to find local Tennessee made products, fresh produce, skincare, and other fermented goodies! Grab a bottle when you’re shopping for farm fresh goods on the square in Manchester!

Taste of Spring: It’s time for Honeysuckle Kombucha!

Our annual farm-foraged Honeysuckle Apple Kombucha is now on tap by the cup or growler refill at Half Hill Farm’s Wellness Emporium in Woodbury, TN (110 W High St. Woodbury, TN 37190)  open seven days a week!

We make this seasonal flavor every year with fresh harvested honeysuckle from our farm in Woodbury. Like all our flavors, this favorite is made with all organic ingredients: honeysuckle, apple and local honey! Just like Spring, it never lasts long, so stop by and grab a growler!

UPDATE 05-25-19: Sorry to say we are now sold out! If you missed it, don’t worry. It will be back next year!

Half Hill Farm’s Ginger Beet Water Kefir Shrub now at Juicy’s

HEY MURFREESBORO: You can now get our farm’s Ginger Beet Water Kefir Shrub with your vegan wrap at Juicy’s Wellness Cafe of Murfreesboro (2314 Medical Center ParkwaySuite A-2 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37129)! Each bottle is made with all organic ginger, beets, apple cider vinegar, nettles, red clover, dandelion leaf and root, and local honey with our water kefir ferment in neighboring Woodbury, Tennessee!

Organic grow plan for licensed industrial hemp farms

Today, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture began mailing out over 2,700 industrial hemp grower licenses for the 2019 grow season. If the record number is any indication, it could be the start of something big in Tennessee.

We are already getting lots of calls from farmers looking for buyers of flower and biomass. One of the requirements many buyers, including our business, will want is organically grown with no evidence of pesticides or other banned inputs in organically grown hemp.

One mistaken use or exposure to a banned input could render all your hard work unusable for certain buyers or the consumer, so we created a working draft of an Organic Grow Plan for licensed industrial hemp growers that outlines a few relevant National Organic Program standards used to certify a crop as organic by the USDA. It is not a full exhaustive plan and are not requirements, but it can be a great guidance to ensure quality and get you on your way to certifying your hemp as organic.

Half Hill Farm was the first certified organic farm to grow industrial hemp in Tennessee. We are a licensed grower, processor and permitted manufacturer that makes quality CBD hemp oils and other products. We are currently partnered with an indoor grow and building a CO2 extraction and testing lab at our Woodbury, TN facility. We are one of many retailers and manufacturers who will want quality Tennessee grown flower and biomass for our stores and products and hope this document can help ensure your product passes quality testing.

Collaboration: If you are a certified organic grower of hemp, or use organic practices you feel need to be added to this document, please leave a comment with the addition or contact us directly. If you have favorite organic products you use that you’d like shared, or have questions, add them in comments. We’ll edit changes into the document. We want this document to be open sourced and available to everyone. If you are one of the many new hemp growers in Tennessee, congratulations and we hope the very best for your farm’s new direction!

Kombucha starter kit – how to make kombucha at home

If you regularly drink kombucha you already know the many health benefits of this fizzy fermented beverage. Did you know you can make it yourself? Our new kombucha starter kits are everything you need to brew your own organic kombucha at home! Our kits include:

  • 1 SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) in 1 cup of kombucha mother
  • 1 cup of organic raw sugar
  • half ounce of organic Assam black tea
  • a 2 gallon glass crock
  • a cover and string
  • a one-page instruction sheet

HOW TO MAKE KOMBUCHA AT HOME
Order your kombucha starter kit from Half Hill Farm online. Each kit comes with more detailed instructions, but here are some basics for home brewers:

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil, turn off heat and add half ounce of loose black tea. Let steep for 4 minutes, then strain out tea and dissolve a cup of sugar in the tea.
  2. Pour into clean glass crock, cover and allow to cool to room temperature.
  3. Open SCOBY pack and pour all the contents into the crock, cover and secure with string. (TIP: make sure your pH is 4.0 or lower to prevent bad bacteria and molds. You can lower the pH with more kombucha mother. Cheap pH meters will work for a while as long as you keep them calibrated.)
  4. Allow to sit on the counter out of direct sunlight for 7-14 days. Use a straw to gently push aside SCOBY to pull a sample. When it is sour enough, it is ready for flavoring and bottling. (TIP: If you see defined patches of green, brown, white or black fuzzy spots on the surface of your SCOBY, toss the entire batch and start over. The perfect kombucha fermentation temperature range is 75-85 degrees. Do not stir during fermentation. You will see an explosion of yeast as brown strands followed by them falling to the bottom as a thin new SCOBY forms on the top. It may appear cloudy at first and begin clarifying close to the end. You can use thinner cheese cloth, but risk contaminants slipping through and landing on your SCOBY. Use fabric that does not prevent the air flow needed for your surface fermentation.)
  5. Remove SCOBY and at least 1 cup of mother per gallon of new kombucha you want to make later and set aside in a clean bowl covered with a napkin.
  6. Strain the kobucha to remove large strands of yeast or pieces of SCOBY. Flavor with organic cold pressed juices of your choice starting with a cup of juice per gallon to taste.
  7. Pour into pressurized bottles (do not use glass designed for vacuum such as canning jars). Cap and allow to sit at room temperature for 2-5 days during which time a secondary fermentation will increase carbonation (it will also decrease sweetness, increase alcohol and increase yeast and form a small SCOBY – control this with refrigeration). Place in fridge to stop fermentation and enjoy! (TIP: beer bottles work but can explode if secondary fermentation goes too long. Use flip-tops, or swing-top bottles instead. They are expensive but well worth it.)

Want to keep it going without needing to buy more SCOBYs and mother? Take the SCOBY and mother you set aside in step 5 and repeat the entire process using your new SCOBY and mother! It’s that simple.

Need to replace your SCOBY and mother? We have you covered. You can order Half hill Farm’s SCOBY’s with mother through our online store or our retail store in the Arts Center of Cannon County.

Health benefits of kombucha: By transforming a Southern staple beverage of many meals (sweet tea) with the natural process of fermentation, you reduce your sugar intake while aiding in digestion with the introduction of organic chemicals that are increasingly missing and eliminated from packaged and processed foods. The primary organic acid in kombucha responsible for helping the body process blood sugars is the acetic acid (vinegar) you smell and taste as “sour.” Another acid that helps the body detoxify by binding to fat soluble toxins in the liver and making them water soluble and easier to flush out in urine is gluconic acid. Look up more benefits these two acids play in your health and well being. Digestion is also aided with a healthy balance of probiotic bacteria used to ferment the alcohol to various organic acids. These good bacteria help bring your gut’s biome in proper balance.

Got any questions? Leave them in comments. We are happy to help spread the culture and appreciation of fermentation, better health and well being!

Kombucha fermentation tanks arrive for farm brewery

Kombucha fermentation tanks

The delivery guy knew the exact location of the only loading dock I could borrow in town, even though it really has no address. It’s a small town, but the driver had been here before delivering freight to Short Mountain Distillery. When he saw the tanks, he knew what was up. 

“Someone’s about to do some serious brewing in Woodbury,” he said with a smile. It’s certainly a first big step in starting our farm’s brewery and churning out some organic fermented goodness!

These 58 gallon (220 Liter) stainless steel fermentation tanks ought to help us brew a lot more kombucha, vinegars and other things to come, but we’re definitely going to need some bigger space to do it right.

Blueberry Ginger Kombucha Apple Ginger Kombucha

The kitchen is full of bottles. The living room is full of bottles, and the quiet is broken by the low hum of a small fridge full of more fizzy booch! There is a home somewhere underneath it all. This year we made a lot of kombucha and shared some with neighbors. We love what it does for our health, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

kombucha bottling day kombucha brewing

Follow us on Facebook to watch our brewery grow and to learn when, where and how you can enjoy our kombucha products!