Unless you haven’t visited the Café within the past several months, you may have noticed a new, fancy-looking drink sitting on the top shelf in the outermost right fridge wall just above the yogurt and apple juice. Contained within an ornate glass bottle is a questionable liquid of varying colors, with floating hunks of God-knows-what lazily floating near the bottom. Perhaps you choose to buy one such bottle, and upon cracking the lid you are met with a smell and taste that rivals raw vinegar and a hint of fermentation. You are skeptical as to whether or not this should be consumed, and end up throwing it away halfway through the drink, thus wasting nearly five precious dollars of your meal plan money.

With this, I’d like to give you a warm welcome into the Kombucha-drinking world.

Kombucha is an ancient drink that originates from eastern Asia, and while health nuts around the globe have sworn by its supposed health benefits, there is little proof as to whether or not those claims are entirely sound. Although, if you ask me, I’ll be damned if I didn’t say that my digestive system is in pretty good shape. Is it because of the tea? Perhaps. But I drink it anyways, because I think it’s delicious.

Now, you may be wondering; but Caroline, you just said it smelled like vinegar and mold! How can you think it’s delicious?

Easy. As a person who buys literal armfuls of this stuff and drinks it like water (I, no joke, have drank three bottles within the past twelve hours), I feel as though I am qualified and ready to teach you the ways of the ‘bucha. With that being said, let me show you how to get into kombucha, in a few easy steps.

1. Take baby steps.

When I first started drinking this magical juice that is probably slowly pickling my insides, I started off by buying the least-offensive looking flavor that I could pinpoint just by sight. It was still a rather offensive taste regardless, but it had a certain... allure to it. It was like drinking coffee for the first time; part of me cringed with every sip, but I still found myself relentlessly drinking it.

With that being said, I would recommend buying a flavor like mango or guava; something that is mellower in taste, but still recognizable as the paint thinner we know as kombucha. After getting used to the mellower flavors, it’ll get easier and easier to become familiar with the more abrasive flavors. It hasn’t changed my tolerance for acidic beverages, but hey, that’s what being caucasian does to your gastric reflux.

2. Once you start, don’t stop drinking it.

It’s important that, once you start with your kombucha journey, you should try not to stop until you have fully accustomed yourself to the flavor and smell of the drink. Commit to the bit; don’t be a quitter. This also applies to drinking the whole of the contents of the bottle-- and I’m not just saying that because I get salty when I see half-drank bottles sitting around. Urghhh...

3. Budget, budget, budget...

At Valparaiso University, it costs $4.59 for a bottle of kombucha (the fact that I know this tells you the kind of person I am, and I am proud of it). It’s important to prioritize your money so that you don’t blow all your money on it once you inevitably fall in love with it and crave it all the time. If you don’t believe me, you are shrewd and naïve and have more innocence than I have ever had.

Here’s an example of that budgeting in action: since I have a sophomore meal plan, I calculated that I would have enough money to buy a bottle of kombucha every day and still have some left over for regular meal expenses without putting a strain on my budget. If I applied this kind of thinking to my real-life finances I’d probably be having real-life tennis matches with Bill Gates by now.

So there you have it; three easy steps to assimilate into the kombucha lifestyle. Now excuse me while I crawl back into my recycle bin and sort through all these glass bottles that are littered across my room.