Wobbly Bottles and Extra Active Batches Explained

Flourish Liquid Probiotics are Truly Living and Thriving

Each bottle of Flourish is unique and filled with living, thriving probiotics! Our probiotics are never freeze-dried, unlike capsuled probiotics. They stay in their most natural liquid growth media throughout their entirety. Because of the natural unadulterated nature of Flourish, shipping and handling of our living product can sometimes result in pressurized, wobbly bottles and sometimes slight leakage.

Why is My Bottle Wobbly?

Although a wobbly bottle can be a little inconvenient, this is actually a sign our probiotic species are truly alive! Not only are they living, but they are also thriving in their natural environment, where they are most comfortable. As a living ecosystem, our probiotics continue to metabolize, which produces carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2) as by-products. Like a soda bottle, these gases build up pressure, and in some bottles, enough pressure builds up that the bottom of the bottle bulges out or slight leakage may occur.

Fortunately, wobbly bottles do not happen too often. But if you do notice this bulging upon the arrival of your Flourish, start by placing your bottle in the refrigerator to help calm down the pressure that was created during the shipping process. Then, when opening your bottle for the first time, make sure to twist the cap slowly. Usually, after releasing the pressure by slowly opening your bottle, the bulged bottom will revert to its normal flattened state.

Extra Active Flourish Bottles

This does not happen often, but sometimes, certain batches of Flourish Living Probiotics can be exceptionally active and thriving, beyond the usual high activity of our living probiotics. While this is a great sign that our probiotics are truly living and thriving in their natural unadulterated environment, extra active batches of Flourish can be a little more challenging to ship. When we individually fill each bottle of Flourish, we purposely overfill to account for any potential leakage that may occur in the shipping and handling process. Even when slight leakage occurs, Flourish is still safe to consume. With the natural pressurization that occurs within Flourish, although some liquid may be able to escape the bottle due to this pressurization during the shipping process, nothing harmful can enter.

Natural Variations of Flourish

There are always natural variations in both flavor and fizz from batch to batch. Several factors can affect these characteristics including time, temperature, pH, raw ingredients (which have their own set of variables like sun, rain, temp, soil, etc.), elevation, and even moon phase and atmospheric pressure. Of those variables, time and temperature are the only two factors that we can control during production.  Even with the pH, we do not control this during the growth phase, allowing the bacteria to regulate their own environment. Other commercial probiotic producers choose to control the pHs through artificial chemical means. We choose to not synthetically alter the bacteria’s natural milieu with added chemicals. We give the species the right growth conditions and nutrients and then allow them to do their thing as they naturally would, unobstructed by human intervention.

Raw Ingredients

The raw ingredients of molasses and sorghum, the nutrient substrates for our probiotics, are also sources of flavor variability as well. Think of a vineyard and how the grapes can change in size, sweetness, composition, and flavor from year to year based on the sun, moisture, heat units, soil, etc. from season to season. Even within the same vineyard in the same season, there can be variations of outcomes. So too will molasses and sorghum vary from season to season, harvest to harvest, in their flavor and composition. We have standards that we set and need to be met for each raw ingredient, but we allow the naturalness to shine through each of the ingredients as a part of our natural fermentation process. Throughout the year as we move through and change batches of mother culture, the flavor can fluctuate from this variable as well.

High Quality You Can Trust!

All that being said, we strive to produce the very best quality of our unique living liquid probiotics through our natural, unadulterated fermentation process. Quality assurance is paramount for us. We always say it has to be good enough for our kids to take! To that end, we have every single batch tested twice, mid-production and final bottling, by a third-party independent lab to verify the absence of pathogens and guarantee a minimum threshold of beneficial bacteria.

All batches must clear both parameters before entering into distribution. With this standard operating procedure in place, we can ensure that laboratory-tested, clean, active batches are leaving our facility.  While the flavor and fizz may vary, our testing assures that each and every batch is alive and kicking and ready to go to work to promote positive health outcomes for our customers.