Assalaamu alaykum. Is homemade kombucha tea halal? Kind regards.

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger. 

One of the well-established Fiqh rules is that all things are lawful unless proven otherwise by Sharia evidence. This rule relies on the verse that reads (what means): {It is He Who created for you all of that which is on the earth. Then, He directed Himself to the heaven, (His being above all creation), and made them seven heavens, and He is Knowing of all things.} [Quran 2:29]

Shaykh ‘Abd Ar-Rahmaan As-Sa‘di wrote:

“It means that He created for you, out of His kindness and mercy, all of that which is on the earth from which you benefit and derive enjoyment and lessons. This verse proves that the basic principle is that all things are pure and lawful because the context of the verse is reminding people of the bounties and blessings of Allah. This excludes the impure things, and they are prohibited as deduced from the verse, which states that all things on earth were created for us, meaning for our benefit. Thus, the verse excludes the harmful things. The divine grace entails that the harmful things should be deemed prohibited to protect us from their harms.”

Hence, the basic principle is that kombucha tea is lawful for consumption, and it is not declared unlawful except for Sharia-acceptable reasons and considerations. We have come to know that fermentation takes place in making it. If an intoxicating substance results from the fermentation process and this intoxicant is completely transformed into another substance to such an extent that it has no intoxicating effect, then there is no problem in consuming it. Shaykhul-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah wrote:

“The correct opinion is the first one, suggesting that whenever it is known that the impurity has transformed, i.e. changed from its original state into something with different characteristics, then the water is declared pure regardless of its amount. The same ruling applies to all liquids. This is because Allah, The Exalted, has deemed all pure things lawful and all impure things unlawful. The impurity is transformed in the sense that it has been changed from the original state of purity. If the characteristics of water or any other liquid are those of pure things and not impure ones, it must be classified as lawful...”

Allah knows best.