Stiff Tea is built on a love of fermentation, great drinks, and the idea that having a good time should never be compromised.

We don’t make kombucha for wellness trends.

We make it for flavour, balance, and proper enjoyment.

Meet Zach

With over a decade in craft beer and kombucha, Zach set out to push the category somewhere new.

After years working across brewing and fermentation, the idea was simple:

Take everything great about kombucha and make it more expressive, more drinkable, and a lot more fun.

Why Hard Kombucha?

Kombucha was growing fast, but most of it played it safe.

Stiff Tea was created to flip that.

More flavour. More character. Less rules.

Born in Manchester

In 2024 Stiff Tea launched it's own brewery in Manchester.

It was a basic setup, modestly self-funded and with some support from the King's Trust, but it was enough to get started.

From day one the focus was simple, brew properly, experiment with confidence, and listen, learn and implement changes so we could brew something people actually want to drink.

And we celebrated this launch the right way, with a Stiff TeaParty at the iconic Manchester venue, Wolf At The Door.

No Rules. Just Flavour.

Stiff Tea is here to bring something new to the UK drinks scene

Not a health drink.

Not a gimmick.

Just properly brewed hard kombucha, made for flavour, balance, and good times.

Growing Up

In 2026, Stiff Tea partnered with a Cider producer to enable us to meet the growing demand.

Our small brewery in Manchester had served it's purpose in letting us test out different brews and refine our processes, but there was always a limit on what we could do with such a modest setup.

With better equipment and a team experienced in proper brewing and fermentation, we're ready to take hard kombucha further without having to sacrifice what made it great in the first place.

Behind the Scenes