JuneShine x Cody Ko "Hippie Juice"

We are the daughters of the SCOBYs you could not burn!

Today I am trying JuneShine x Cody Ko’s Hippie Juice ($4.99 per 16 oz can).

I have recently gotten into Youtube. I mostly use it to watch old episodes of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. I also watch a lot of videos of Lizzo surprising fans on the Late Late Show with James Corden. You can always find a new iteration of Lizzo surprising fans on the Late Late Show with James Corden. Hollywood Boulevard has become a war zone due to the frequency Lizzo is out there surprising fans.

But I only had a pedestrian understanding of Cody Ko. For those uninitiated, Cody Ko is a 31-year-old YouTuber and podcaster who also makes music under something called Tiny Meat Gang (the Lil Dickie theft?). I remember him from Vine as a somewhat charismatic and decent-looking dude who thought he was funnier than he was. As someone who did theatre in high school, I have encountered this brand of guy often.

Cody Ko transitioned his Vine virality into Youtuber success, and has almost 6 million followers who come for his brand of reaction videos that critique other “cringe” Youtube videos. My friend Kate has been an on-again-off-again Cody Ko viewer: “I used to watch him but then I figured out he’s not very funny.” It’s honestly hard to to tell sometimes on Youtube.

Watching Cody Ko’s videos, he toes the line between a Jake Paul brand of troll-y paleo-masculinity while simultaneously seeming to critique that style of bro culture (he has a “comedy" song that makes fun of NFTs). Ko seems like he wears Urban Outfitters-patterned button downs and is probably nice to his girlfriend.

In a way, he is the epitome of hard kombucha. Sort of “hipster,” sort of pathetically normal.

So it makes sense that Ko would collaborate with JuneShine on a new hard kombucha flavor: hippie juice. It’s a green tea-based drink with strawberries, lemon juice and yumberry. As the press release unfortunately reads, “Think peace, love and happiness with a modern twist. Groovy? Absolutely.” Ko announced his partnership late last month and has not done much press about it since.

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JuneShine was founded in San Diego in 2018 by Greg Serrao and Forrest Dein, two non-Jews who wanted to create a healthy alcohol made from natural ingredients. They have partnered on flavors with other celebrities like Whitney Cummings, Evan Mock and Diplo (OK dream blunt rotation!!).

I had never heard of JuneShine, but I think everyone else has. They’re fully everywhere, at every store. So many people I’ve talked to said they have six-packs sitting in their fridge that they don’t want to drink.

There’s something so boring about kombucha, and about fermentation at large. It’s like: imagine if cooking was science class. Like, you’ll never find me naming my mother starter.

Kombucha seems to come in two distinct typologies: one, produced in mason jars by a collective of lesbians in West Oakland. Then there’s the JuneShine model of golden hour floppy-hat Kombucha. While it has the valence of a Venice Beach drug rug, this “hippie” model of Kombucha has gone viral and corporate.

Last year, JuneShine raised $24 million in funding led by Amberstone Ventures and Litani Ventures, who also have heavily invested in RXBAR. JuneShine apparently has 40% of the hard kombucha market in the US, selling some 10 million cans a year.

Hippie juice is a perfect encapsulation of this corporate/granola mingling. The packaging for hippie juice like a semiotic-expression of the brand’s — and of Cody Ko’s — ethos: images of waves, of a sun, of Yin Yang symbols, of palm trees. It looks like you could find it for free in a bowl at the VIP section of Coachella.

But hippie juice is honestly not bad. It doesn’t have the same bitter tang of most kombucha flavors. It has balanced notes of orange and lemon rind and was really refreshing. Honestly, the stuff was good.

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To get the full hippie juice experience, I went with my mom and aunt to the JuneShine taproom in Santa Monica. I hadn’t been to Santa Monica in some time and I am here to tell you: Santa Monica is fully a haunted house and the ghouls are digital nomads! I don’t always remember it being this way. Back in my day, we all rode our horse and buggies to Gjusta. The surfers are now data marketing analysts.

The JuneShine storefront was clad in a Netflix-reality-show aesthetic. Everything was white and airy and there was a miasma of Kaytranada coming from all corners. There was a big palm-frond sign with ‘JuneShine’ written in neon. Thin women wore Alo Yoga leggings and bathed in that Pacific light as they sipped hard kombucha out of stemless glasses.

The taproom was closing at 5:30 for June Shine x Club Rewire, an in-person talk covering “boundaries + attachment.”

We all sat at a long reclaimed-wood table. I asked my mom what kind of Youtube videos she thought Cody Ko made by the taste of the drink:  “Comedy observations about being young and cute.” She wasn’t far off.

The drink, she said, “ didn’t bother her” but nevertheless, she “would never have it again.” Sorry Cody :(