Bearded Buch

Bearded Buch was a Cleveland kombucha company with a simple promise: deliciously weird. Owner Aaron Powell, who came from communications and graphic design, started brewing kombucha at home, then formed the company in April 2014 and began brewing at Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen, the shared food incubator downtown.

Three months in, Heinen's put the 'buch in all 18 of its Northeast Ohio stores, and it went on to more than 120 locations, including Whole Foods, Buehler's and Giant Eagle Market District. Flavors such as ginger snap, spiced elderberry and concord grape fermented for about a month, and Cleveland Magazine named it the city's best kombucha in 2015. The company later moved into its own 5,000-square-foot brewery in Old Brooklyn.