7 From there, Van Alem decided to contact brewers for a collaboration and 2 years ago she contacted HAN BioCentre, which specializes in fermentation and at the time had just finished another project on bacterial cellulose. The main research question: how can brewing kombucha be properly combined with developing bacterial cellulose? CONSISTENT QUALITY "To scale up, the most important thing is getting a consistent quality. The question is how do we achieve a sufficient supply of cellulose from different brewers that is also of the same quality? And even before that, there’s the question: how do we even measure the quality of bacterial cellulose? HAN BioCentre is helping us with these kinds of research questions." Exactly what happens in that ‘pancake’ and what factors affect the cultivation of cellulose has since been studied. Now the search is on for the right mix of yeast and bacteria, and then which ‘diet’ works best. Das: "The coordination of the 2 processes, making delicious kombucha and growing enough bacterial cellulose, is proving to be complicated. As we steer for optimal biomass, kombucha becomes more acidic. If the kombucha is leading, the cellulose is not optimal." RIGHT BANDWITH So it’s about searching for a bandwidth within which the kombucha brewers can operate. "Ultimately, we want to use HAN's knowledge to inform our brewers so they can make marketable kombucha as well as sufficient cellulose." Meanwhile, BIOMA Lab has already sold the ne- cessary products and the first user feedback is being shared. "For example, it’s still a question for us whether the material should be thicker, or even better able to repel water. That should be shown by testing it in practice. Based on that, we can further optimize that process again. biomalab.nl Charlotte van Alem (l) and Yvonne Das
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