Water kefir is easy, fast and can be combined with all sorts of wonderful fruits or fruit juices.
Servings: 0
Ingredients
1/4 cup or 3 rounded tbsp of kefir grains
1-L Mason jar, or larger if you have more grains; just up your ratio of sugar to size of jar.
Filtered water (chlorinated tap water will kill grains)
1/4 cup of organic sugar
start with refined organic sugar and then you can experiment with other sweeteners including: raw cane juice, coconut palm sugar, honey & maple syrup
A slice of organic lemon
A couple of pieces of dried fruit (fig, unsulphured apricot or prunes)
Instructions
Wash the jar well if it is new.
Put the water kefir grains, sugar and dried fruit into the jar and give it a good stir with a wooden spoon, until the sugar is almost dissolved.
Add the lemon (it must be organic or the chemicals will inhibit or kill the grains) and place a plastic BPA lid on loosely or cover with a lint free cloth and secure with rubber band.
If you can’t find an organic lemon, try adding a few drops of apple cider vinegar to your first batch of kefir and then leave some liquid in the jar when you strain it – once it has fermented. This is done to keep the PH low.
Leave at room temperature for 24-48 hours until the kefir tastes sourish and slightly fizzy.
You can decide how sweet or sour you like your kefir, but the more sour it is, the less carb there will be and more of the beneficial lactic and acetic acids. I usually give mine 48 hours.
When it is ready to drink, take out the lemon slice and dried fruit and discard into the compost – or eat if you want to.
Strain the mixture through a sieve and put the liquid into screw top or stoppered glass bottles.
Do not store in plastic as the acidic nature of kefir will leach chemicals out of the plastic.
You can now leave the kefir to continue fermenting in the bottle at room temperature for 12-48 hours (less in the summer, I have had plenty of fizz within 6-8 hrs on hot summer days), depending on how potent it is. Check the fizziness by burping the bottles every 6 hours or so – don’t allow them to over carbonate or your bottle could explode!
Put them into the fridge once they have carbonated enough as this will slow down the fermentation.
Water kefir can stay in the brewing bottles in fridge for up to 3 months or longer, but will become quite sour over time.
Note: adding honey to your main water kefir ferment can go alcoholic if left too long. This is fine, if that is the intention but I recommend keeping some kefir grains going in sugar as a back up.