Leave Your Sword

Leave Your Sword is an independent, auto-financed craft urban micro brewery based in Amsterdam. It brews 100% tea-based kombucha and takes its name and inspiration from the Japanese tea ceremony. The project was originally hosted by the Sandberg Instituut and has since been embedded in local networks that bridge the artistic world with kombucha, staging album releases, video creation, photography exhibitions, and culinary events. Its documented bar events and collaborations run from at least 2017 through 2025.^[1]

Nicolas Adam is a founder of Leave Your Sword.^[1]

The brewery developed proprietary software with a programmer to track production data and understand its brewing behavior and profiles. It measures ABV using the Beer Alcolyzer M by Anton Paar, and reports having performed thousands of measurements on its own products as well as for other professional and amateur brewers. Leave Your Sword also conducted in-house and food-laboratory studies to provide customers with data on alcohol level, pH, sugar content, caffeine content, and food safety.^[1]

Leave Your Sword maintains a curated tea library referencing over 25 specialist books on tea history, terroir, and tasting. It was a member of Kombucha Brewer International, working with the organization to establish quality and production standards for 100% tea-only kombucha brewing.^[1],[2]

Sustainability is built into operations: the brewery recycles organic waste with a neighboring garden, sanitizes and reuses returned bottles, and delivers in returnable crates.^[1]

Leave Your Sword brews tea-only kombucha organized into three lines defined by how the tea is sourced and blended. The Essentials line is brewed with a single type of tea blended from several tea gardens, and includes Earl Grey, Green Jasmine, and Lapsang Souchong. The Single Estate line is brewed from a single tea garden selected for its best profile from that origin, and includes Ceylon OP – Neluwa Garden, Darjeeling Black First Flush FTGFOP1 Soom Garden, and Milky Oolong Semi-oxidised Spring Harvest. The Botanicals line blends 50% tea with 50% wild foraged or locally grown botanicals, as in Meadowsweet & Green Sencha.

Every Leave Your Sword kombucha is built on the same foundation: whole loose tea leaves, organic beetroot sugar, water, and kombucha culture, fermented and finished so the result is unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, and free of residual sugars. The producer states its brewing method is inspired by wine making, modern beer, and sake brewing, developed to achieve a stable, room-temperature-shelf-stable product without a vinegary profile. Tea selection ranges from iconic blends to high-grade single-estate gardens, and each bottle sits at 2.5% ABV.^[1]

Bottle aging & natural carbonation. Across the range the kombuchas are bottle aged and naturally carbonated rather than force-carbonated or filtered, a common treatment applied to each release.

• Ceylon OP – Neluwa Garden — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Darjeeling Black First Flush FTGFOP1 Soom Garden — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Green Jasmine — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Lapsang Souchong — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Meadowsweet & Green Sencha — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Milky Oolong Semi-oxidised Spring Harvest — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged
• Verbena & Green Sencha — unpasteurized, unfiltered, naturally carbonated, bottle aged

Extended and seasonal fermentation. Several botanical bottlings use notably long fermentations tuned to the raw material. Elderflower is one of two once-a-year seasonal brews; its flowers are picked and brewed on the same day, then fermented for up to four months. Meadowsweet & Green Sencha uses dried meadowsweet flowers that were advised to rest for a year before brewing, with the brewing process itself taking six months to reach balance.

The tea-forward bottlings span a wide sensory range. Ceylon OP – Neluwa Garden shows apricot, tangerine, warm black tea, and black pepper; Darjeeling Black First Flush leans toward hay, dry nettle, wild flowers, chamomile, and iodine; and Earl Grey carries bergamot, toasted brioche, and deep black tea. Lapsang Souchong is the smokiest of the line, with oak, citrus, tobacco smoke, whisky, and pine. Milky Oolong offers peach, dulce de leche, exotic fruits, green tea, and a silky texture.

The green-sencha botanicals share a fresh, floral register. Green Jasmine shows green tea, jasmine flowers, fresh-cut grass, and honey; Verbena & Green Sencha green tea, verbena, fresh-cut grass, and honey; Elderflower green tea, elderflower, fresh-cut grass, honey, and pollen; and Meadowsweet & Green Sencha green tea, meadowsweet, fresh-cut grass, honey, tonka, and vanilla.

The kombuchas are presented as culinary pairings across savory and sweet courses. The lighter green-sencha botanicals — Green Jasmine, Verbena & Green Sencha, Elderflower, and Meadowsweet & Green Sencha — are suggested for dessert, raw fish, and light vegetable-focused starters, with meadowsweet also matched to lamb. Ceylon OP is proposed for dessert, chocolate, seaweed, and mushrooms; Darjeeling Black for lamb tartare, roasted cauliflower, flat oysters from Zeeland, and lobster; Earl Grey for dark chocolate, white meat, and braised fish; Milky Oolong for cheese, pastry, and fruits. Lapsang Souchong pairs with grilled red meat, octopus, oysters, blue cheese, and poached fruits; an iconic match from the LYS taproom served it alongside a tosti of over-year-aged kimchi and sakekasu brioche with blue stilton.

Leave Your Sword operated a taproom inside the brewery, serving kombucha on draft for casual tasting and direct-to-consumer purchase.^[1]

On Saturday nights the brewery ran a recurring 'Sweet Tooth Club' that transformed the taproom into an experimental cocktail bar, pairing kombucha with food and pastry and mixing it into original cocktail recipes. The event featured kombucha cocktail and pastry pairing and ran across four seasons from 2019 to 2022.^[1],[2]

Leave Your Sword conducted Tea Sommelier masterclasses at Echoput in the Netherlands across 2021, 2022, and 2023. It participated in a Japan sake brewery tour with Otemba in October 2023, and collaborated with Gensaka Shuzo cocktail bar Contrast in 2024.^[2]

Label artwork has been produced in collaboration with outside artists. The Verbena & Green Sencha label, depicting an Egyptian falcon and a Japanese mamushi pit viper locked in combat over the rising sun, was created with Sylvain at Tegroeg Studio. The Darjeeling Black label features a Bengal tiger drawn by Brindi Tattoo, and the Lapsang Souchong label features the Chochin Obake, a friendly cyclops smoking paper lantern from Japanese yōkai folklore, inspired by Katsushika Hokusai's One Hundred Ghost Stories.

Leave Your Sword bottlings have been recognized at both spirits and kombucha competitions. At the International Wine and Spirit Competition, Ceylon OP – Neluwa Garden, Lapsang Souchong, and Milky Oolong Semi-oxidised Spring Harvest each won Bronze in 2023, while Darjeeling Black First Flush FTGFOP1 Soom Garden and Verbena & Green Sencha each won Bronze in 2024. At the World Kombucha Award 2024, Earl Grey won Silver in the Black tea category and Lapsang Souchong won Bronze in the same category.