Jonah and the boys will be delivering some of the good old live rock n roll music to the patio at Portch Tea in Emmaus.

George and Melanie DeVault, built their dream house on twenty acres in Vera Cruz, Pennsylvania that they named Pheasant Hill Farm because of the abundance of wild pheasants on the property. An early architect’s sketch of the farmhouse offered a misspelling of the back “porch” that became a family joke at the same time that the p-o-r-T-c-h became the calm center of activity in the greenhouses and fields. Preserving the sentiment, construction of the new farmentory and shop prominently featured an inviting porch to welcome customers with the goal of connecting them not only to the product, but the process— the lifestyle and family behind it. The greenhouses and fields are open to visitors, and a trail offers the opportunity to explore the property, engage with nature, and enjoy a drink.

Kombucha, at its most essential, is a sweet tea that has been fermented by a particular culture of bacteria and yeast. The result, when well executed, is a lightly effervescent, mildly acidic beverage containing live probiotic culture and trace amounts of alcohol (<.5% by law). By focusing on the quality and type of tea used, and tweaking, among others, the variables of time and temperature, quite a wide range of flavors of “unflavored” kombucha can be produced. While the choice of tea (and yerba maté) for our base kombucha was deliberate, it was also primarily designed to set up secondary fermentation. Experiments with growing tea and maté in high tunnel greenhouses are ongoing, but the true focus is on imbuing this “base” (unflavored) kombucha with the herbs and fruit that grow well here in southeastern Pennsylvania. Portch Tea produces dozens (and dozens) of different flavor combinations from what the farm grows in a given season. Adding alcoholic production to the mix has allowed for even more experimentation and development of flavor by removing a number of limitations necessary to maintaining legally non-alcoholic levels on naturally fermented products.