Water Kefir

[herondancer]

But growing kombucha itself, I'm just sticking to black/green tea with organic sugar for now. Also, there are some teas that you cannot add to your kombucha (see here), it's mostly tea bags that contain oils that are bad for it.

Interesting. I'd never heard of that, but kombucha was so new at the time (and no internet!), that it was just folks passing along a mother and an outline of how to do it. The only thing that was hard and fast was using white sugar, not honey or any other sort of sweetener. Apparently the critters are very picky about the type of sugar they like.

 

[Yas]

Thanks for the link @Oxajil, I might look into that in the future. Now I will try making sauerkraut with the water kefir as a starter to see how it goes. I'm excited because I love sauerkraut and, from what I've read, it's a great probiotic food.

Regarding the sugar, water kefir nodules are also very picky about it. And it turns out they also need plenty of minerals to be healthy. There are many ways in which to add minerals to the water for them -such as adding mineral supplements-, but I've been adding a pinch of sea salt or Himalayan salt and they seem to be liking it.

I don't know about kombucha but since it is also a community of microorganisms, they might also need minerals to be healthy. (?)

And about flavours, I guess it might be similar with both too. I know that people make water kefir mixing lots of things in the jar but I also prefer to keep it with the basic ingredients for the first fermentation, and then do a second fermentation adding flavours to it. That means removing the nodules and just adding the flavours to the resulting water and leaving it on the counter for another day or two before drinking. One can make some interesting kind of 'fizzy' drinks with this method. I prefer the pure one, but my family really enjoy the flavored one.

 

[thorbiorn]

The kombucha tea is a complex fermentation product, as can be read in a number of scholarly articles:

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An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie [Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 63, No. 7, 2000, Pages 976–981 Copyright , International Association for Food Protection]
And Understanding Kombucha Tea Fermentation: A Review. - PubMed - NCBI
Kombucha has also been used as a study object for undergraduate chemistry course work: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00329 J. Chem. Educ. 2016, 93, 10, 1770-1775 which has this picture:

 

[liam1310]

Would RO filtered water work for making water kefir??? I've only recently started to make kefir using milk, would like to try the water method.

 

[liam1310]

Would RO filtered water work for making water kefir??? I've only recently started to make kefir using milk, would like to try the water method.

Sorry my question was answered a couple of posts back.I add salt to the water.

 

[Lys]

Hello!

I wanted to ask for your advice as a few weeks ago my kefir started to get slimy and the drink is still sweet.
Today it was really to viscous for drinking it.
Have you ever experienced the same thing? Do you have any advice?
I thought that it was because of the hot weather so I moved the jars to another darker and colder room.
Then I changed the sugar, from brown to white then to brown again but nothing changed.

I've read that the kefir may be polluted with yeast or the water may contain too many minerals or not enough.
Some people say that sugar must be white some others say that it must be brown or even raw.

So I'm a bit lost. If you have any idea they are most welcome.
Thanks!