About

It started in a Tesco aisle

I was standing in my local Tesco, picking a drink to go with my sandwich. For no real reason, I turned a bottle over and read the label. And there it was. A warning. An actual warning, telling me the stuff inside was linked to affecting activity and attention in children.

When did a soft drink start needing a health warning?

I put it back. I didn't buy any of them. And somewhere between that shelf and the car park, Life Blood started.

We didn't set out to be a "functional drink"

Here's the daft part. Our commitment to real, natural ingredients and never using artificial sweeteners is the exact thing that landed us in the functional drinks category. We didn't move toward it. Everyone else's recipes moved the goalposts.

I'll keep saying it. We're not a health and wellness brand. We just have standards and make our drinks the way drinks should be made. If that's enough to get us shelved next to the functional stuff, fine. That says a lot less about us than it does about the current state of mainstream soft drinks.

Built by hand, in Aberdeen

Every bit of Life Blood was made in-house. The recipes, the branding, this website, all of it. Built piece by piece, right here in Aberdeen, by an independent drinks producer with no big backer and no shortcuts. Just real kombucha, brewed with live cultures, the way it should be.

Six years on, we're still doing it our way, and now we're shipping thousands of cases the length and breadth of the UK.

It came out of lockdown

None of this was the plan. I was working in subsea energy, quite happily, no intention of leaving. Then Covid hit, furlough landed, and I suddenly had time. So I built something. I developed the drinks, got samples out to local shops, and put up the first website from my kitchen.

A few months later the day job made me redundant. Instead of finding another one, I went all in on the drinks. Haven't looked back once.

Where we're going

Life Blood isn't a company you buy from. It's one you get behind. A real, stubborn, independent thing made by someone who read the label so you don't have to.

We're just getting started.

Some people call it wellness. We call it common sense.

Life Blood, in short

Who makes Life Blood?

An independent drinks producer in Aberdeen, Scotland, founded by Chris in 2020 during the Covid lockdown. We brew a Scottish kombucha in small batches, by hand.

What is Life Blood?

An independent, small-batch live culture kombucha and soft drinks brand made with natural ingredients and no artificial sweeteners, vegan, gluten free, and 39 calories a can.

What makes it different?

Everything is developed in-house, from recipe to branding, with a flat refusal to use artificial sweeteners, which is what placed it in the functional drinks category.

Want the honest, nerdy detail? We answer the big kombucha questions over on Back of the Can, from whether kombucha is alcoholic to how much caffeine is in it.