Bloem - Sep 2021

Bloem’s own home brewed elixir -
ADAM’S ALE
Leanne Holtzhausen’s small-batch kefir water, called Adam’s Ale, was born from
the need to help her baby daughter deal with allergies. Here Leanne tells the
backstory of how Adam’s Ale grew into the success it is today…
I grew up… in Bloemfontein. After
living in Cape Town and elsewhere for
a few years, my husband, Gertjan, and
I moved back to Bloemfontein in 2014.
Since then, we’ve became parents to
Hanna-Cosette (5) and Gertjan (3).
I was never very health conscious…
but when my husband and I started
planning a family, and especially when
I was pregnant with Hanna-Cosette,
we contemplated many of our choices
and actions, what we put in our bodies,
and what values we wanted to instill
in our children from a young age. In
2017, when my daughter was one year
old, she suffered from terrible allergies.
My husband looked for alternatives
to help her body fight back, which
did not include daily medication. He
started experimenting with fermented
foods, first milk kefir, and then water
kefir, after reading about the incredible
benefits. I was not fond of the taste of
water kefir and experimented on my
own. My goal from the start was that
any child should like the taste of water
kefir, especially since everything today
is so highly processed and sugar-laden.
That is where my passion project,
Adam’s Ale Water Kefir, was born.
Water kefir is… one of the easiest
cultured foods to introduce into a
24 Get It Bloemfontein September 2021 getitmagazine.co.za/bloemfontein