It's alive! The UK producers embracing fermentation to make delicious products teeming with life

In food terms, fermenting is as close to true alchemy as we get; the transformation of base ingredients into weird, wonderful and delicious forms that are, thanks to friendly bacteria working away at microscopic levels to convert sugars and starches into acids, alcohols and gases, literally alive. It’s ubiquitous, responsible for everything from beige staples such as bread and beer to cheese, yoghurt, vinegar, kombucha and kefir (of which more shortly). It’s a global phenomenon, too: take the Horn of Africa’s sour injera pancakes, kvass in Eastern Europe (a fizzy drink traditionally made with stale rye bread), soy sauce in China, the Filipino shrimp sauce of bagoong, kimchi in Korea, miso in Japan… the list goes on and on.

Ever since the emergence of agrarian Neolithic communities, fermenting has been an essential form of preservation for humankind through cold, dark winters and periods of scarcity. In his book The Science of Fermentation, Robin Sherriff even notes that the early ingestion of fermented fruit may have kickstarted the brain development of modern humans — a happy salve for the cider drinkers among us. Regardless of any historic impact on our brainpower, many fermented foods and drinks are rich in probiotics, living organisms with a host of putative benefits for our digestion. For some reason, Britain never really developed the panoply of fermented foods seen elsewhere: the chef, writer and fermentation enthusiast Thom Eagle puts this, in part, down to our country’s kitchen-bound and generational fear of salt and bacteria. Mercifully, a host of independent, UK-based producers are now bucking the trend, creating delectable products teeming with a life of their own.

The Crafty Pickle Co sauerkraut, Crick, Monmouthshire

Self-confessed ‘science geeks, tree huggers and food nerds’ Madi Myers and Arthur Serini met when studying nutrition in the mid 2010s. They’d always been interested in fermentation’s role in gut health, but became truly fascinated by the wonder of controlled rot on a 2017 camping tour of the Scottish Highlands, sans fridge. ‘We had several jars of sauerkraut [fermented shredded cabbage] and kimchi [a spicy mix of fermented vegetables] in the boot of Madi’s car,’ explains Arthur. ‘They kept really well out of the fridge and it got us thinking about the role that fermented foods play in our food system.’ After peeling away for a couple of years, they rejoined forces in Aberdeen, spotting a gap in the market and starting The Crafty Pickle Co in 2019, creating tiny batches of ’kraut in glass fermentation vessels.

After moving back to Madi’s native Wales in 2021, they started sourcing surplus root vegetables from smallholders around Crick, Crickhowell and Monmouthshire and set to work upscaling the business. To Arthur’s mind, a perfect sauerkraut should be thinly sliced, crunchy and long-fermented (to reflect its Eastern European origins, when huge batches would be aged over winter) and sour and tangy on the palate. Their signature Crafty Kraut encapsulates this: a 21-day-aged mix of cabbage, carrots, caraway, garlic and sea salt, of which they make about 20,000 jars a year (and which pips, but only just, the equally toothsome, jalapeño-spiked Mexicana Kraut).

Delicious as it is, the overall idea of preservation as an ethical boon, as well as its importance in the history of gastro evolution, remains key to the Crafty Kraut ethos. ‘In the past 100 or so years, fermentation has kind of fallen away a little bit,’ says Madi. ‘We want to be part of the revolution to bring it back.’

Old Tree Brewery kombucha, Lewes, East Sussex

The seed for Old Tree was planted with a chance encounter on a train, when founders Tom Daniell and Nick Godshaw, on their way back from an anti-fracking event, bonded over ‘life, the environment and wanting to work with Nature — and what you can make from Nature,’ explains managing director, Tai Ray-Jones. They tried out a forest-gardening project and a café, but, spurred by the botanical drinks they’d been concocting, refocused their efforts on quaffable probiotics in 2018.

‘Kombucha [a fermented tea] ticked all the boxes,’ notes Tai. ‘It’s low in alcohol and sugar — and, once you get the base, you can add all sorts of things to it: fruits, leaves, flowers, herbs.’ For the foundation of their recipe, they plumped for a blend of sencha and Assam teas, to which bacterial cultures are added in the form of a gelatinous disc called a ‘scoby’. The fermentation process takes a couple of weeks, after which they mix in natural, hydrostilled flavourings.

Of all their perennial variations, Oaklore is the simplest, unflavoured, but still ‘slightly apple-y’. Ancient Futures is made with Boadicea hops, ‘for something more beery’. Forager’s Garden, meanwhile, factors a palate of lemon balm and lavender. They also knock up seasonal brews: mugwort, rosehips, linden blossom or mint, say — ‘we use whatever’s in season that we can get our hands on’ — all foraged or sourced from local growers, for tiny batches.

Crucially, many commercial kombuchas are heavily filtered, with CO2 and probiotics added later; little more than bijou hipster pop. Not so at Old Tree Brewery, Tai explains. ‘We let the microbes do the work and we let them stay in the drink. With our kombucha, you get all the life.’

Ostlers cloudy apple cider vinegar, Goodleigh, Devon

At its core, apple cider vinegar is simply cider gone bad; infiltrated by airborne bacteria that transform the booze into piquant, fruity acids. It is a nightmare for commercial cider-makers — but magic for folks such as the Ostlers. Founded by Peter Hartnoll as a cider mill in 1987, Ostlers began creating the sharp stuff after he started supping an off batch of cider as a Roman-era remedy for his arthritis. It miraculously improved; convinced of its healing properties, Peter began selling the vinegar as a dedicated product.

It was a straightforward shift, laughs his daughter, Becci Paterson, as ‘even his cider tasted like vinegar’. Almost 30 years later, with Peter retired and Becci at the helm, Ostlers is the South-West’s pre-eminent producer of cloudy apple cider vinegar.

To make the vinegar, Becci takes cider-apple varieties such as Michelin, Dabinett and Brown’s, fermenting their juice in tanks of up to 6,000 litres in size. Over a few years, a weblike culture of natural yeast and bacteria called a ‘mother’ develops, which transforms the sweet liquid into vinegar. ‘When it’s wrong, it’s right,’ she says of the process. This culture (‘like a massive alien afterbirth that gets everywhere and clogs up our pumps’) is kept in the bottle; something considered unsightly to the health-store demographic that had apple cider vinegar ringfenced when Ostlers started marketing theirs properly, about 16 years ago— but now commonplace given its abundance of healthy bacteria and enzymes.

As happenstance goes, Ostlers’ segue from a workaday cider mill to a sustainable, organic, off-grid business of award-winning repute was, confirms Becci, ‘a very good — but an accidental — move. We make really amazing vinegar, but we make a slightly sharp cider!’

Susana & Daughters kefir, Midhurst, West Sussex

Susana Perez was a teenager when she discovered the wondrous properties of kefir, a probiotic milk drink loaded with protein and vitamin B12, which originated in the Caucasus mountains between Russia and Georgia. A judo champion in her native Spain, she was given it as an unlikely strengthening hack by the grandmother of a colleague. ‘I was never ill and really strong,’ she says. ‘To me, it was a magical thing. I was going to competitions and winning.’ Now, Susana is the force behind Susana & Daughters, the kefir brand that she makes with milk from a herd at Cowdray Park.

Decades after discovering kefir and following a more recent eureka moment when she was trekking the Camino de Santiago trail, she decided to start making it herself. After learning the ropes on an organic farm near Barcelona in Spain, she approached the West Sussex estate to see if they’d let her set up shop alongside their free-range cows. Operating at a small scale was paramount. ‘I didn’t want to be on some industrial estate,’ she says. ‘I wanted to be next to the cows.’

She met the estate CEO, Jonathan Russell, who relayed her idea to the Viscount and Viscountess Cowdray. They adored it. Good milk equals good kefir and Cowdray’s, she stresses, is excellent. She started in 2018 proper, in an 18th-century stone estate building, converted into a ‘kitchen for kefir’. She produced her first commercial batch in February 2019 and is now making 500 bottles a week, always sold in glass (she’s also vehemently averse to plastic waste). Mrs Perez adds nothing to her full-fat milk but kefir culture grains, which convert lactose into lactic acid. The milk is pasteurised to destroy bacteria, but it’s not put through a homogeniser, which would destroy fats and protein structures and remove the nutrients. The result? A creamy, complex, effervescent drink with — given the distance from cow to kitchen — negligible food miles. ‘It’s like the king of yoghurt,’ she concludes, ‘with billions of gut-friendly bacteria.’

Best of the rest

• Blesys Sherp hot sauce, Cornwall A small-scale operation in the Cornish village of Millbrook, Blesys Sherp — the local adjective for ‘spicy’— was started by three friends seeking to apply to chillies the same nerdish appreciation they do to specialty coffee. Their signature ‘house’ sauce melds habaneros and mango to piping effect.
• Tempeh Meades, Bristol Tempeh is a nutty-tasting pressed cake of cooked and fermented soy beans, often used like tofu. Tempeh Meades was founded in 2019 by Ben Meades, who learned about commercial tempeh production in West Java before moving to Bristol to start making his delicious take on the vegan staple.
• Bombom gochujang, London South Korean chef Seji Hong began creating condiments after running a supper club from her flat in Wimbledon. Her gochujang — a fermented chilli paste — is tweaked from the traditional Korean style, incorporating plum syrup for sweetness and garlic for a faintly more European flavour profile.

This feature originally appeared in the February 25, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.