When you hear taproom, most likely your first thought is beer, but Sacred Springs is a different sort of taproom. It serves up locally made kombucha.
Joel Andrus and Geoff Lamden opened the Sacred Springs taproom earlier this month after several years of offering their products at local retail stores.
Located on Wealthy Street, Sacred Springs offers 12 rotating tap flavors, bottles to go, howlettes and a food menu that includes bagel sandwiches by Grand Rapids Bagel.
With over 100 flavors to draw from, Andrus said a few standbys that you’re likely to see on the rotating tap menu include: Root of Life (beets, ginger and turmeric), Flower of Life (jasmine, elderberries, hibiscus), Thursday Knight (chamomile lavender), Trop Hopics (pineapple hops), and The Grapeful Harvest (concord grape).
Kombucha is a non-alcoholic fermented tea. “We blend a couple different types of green tea to make ours,” Andrus said. “Most kombucha companies out there use mainly black tea, which makes the kombucha rather vinegary. Using green tea produces more ascorbic acid, which is softer and more palatable.”
Andrus said brewing takes anywhere from 10 to 21 days “depending on hundreds of different factors.” Batches are taste tested every day to ensure that “each batch is the best it can be.”
Another interesting part of Sacred Spring’s brewing process: sound. “We use sound to infuse our kombucha every day,” Andrus said. He noted sound played a huge part in how the store was designed. He described the space as “modern and simple with a touch of weird.”
Andrus and Lamden got their start in 2016 at a shared kitchen in Lowell. Outgrowing the space within six months, the pair moved production to its current home in Jenison “where we still brew today.”
Andrus said a taproom was always part of the vision.
“We have always wanted the taproom,” he said. “We believe that we can reach the community with a brick and mortar. We offer so much more than our bottled kombucha. We have at least a hundred flavors that we will be rotating. Also, we are currently scheduling sound meditations and kombucha workshops that we will be hosting in the taproom. Also, coming up Geoff will be teaching didgeridoo classes on Tuesday nights.”
The company has evolved quickly. “We have expanded our space twice now,” Andrus said. “We started by bottling five flavors and distributed the bottles ourselves. Now we are in hundreds of stores with multiple distributors taking our bottles all across the state. We are starting to focus heavily on offering our kombucha in kegs.”
While bottles are available to go at the new Sacred Springs storefront, you can still pick them up at health food stores, specialty grocery stores, a few larger grocery stores, breweries, restaurants and coffee shops throughout the city, too.
Find Sacred Springs at 1059 Wealthy Street SE. Hours: Monday – Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.
*Photos courtesy of Sacred Springs
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