Kefir?

[coolpancho]

Does anybody drink non dairy Kefir? It has 40+ good bacteria. Dairy kefir can be bought on the supermarket (with sugars,flavors,etc) but the non dairy one has to be made at home.

Example:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=+water+kefir+grains

[HeatherAnne]

Here's a post awhile back about non-dairy kefir made with almond milk http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?67191-Raw-Almond-Milk-Kefir&p=681102&highlight=#post681102 . This is the Kefir starter I use http://bodyecology.com/digestive-health-kefir-starter.html . Have a great day!

[coolpancho]

thanks. I read somewhere that naturally cultured kefir (from grains) has many more bacteria types than the packaged ones (from starter). What do you think?

[DebB]

I used to make water kefir last year. It did bother me though, the amount of sugar in there. I used sucanot and evaporated cane.

My friend who has type II diabetes visited, drank it and tested her sugars and they were quite elevated after drinking it. I decided to stop making it.

We have made almond-coconut kefir without added sugar. My husband loved it (I did not). It was quite tangy. But it did not have enough sugar from the coconut water to sustain life for the kefir grains. I could only use them a couple times and then I had to put them back in the sugar-water solution in the fridge to feed them.

I think you can buy body ecology's brand of kefir powder (?) and make the above successfully. I don't know if you reuse some of your current batch as starter for the next batch though - you may have to use fresh powder with each batch. You could probably check Donna Gates Body Ecology website for more info on that.

Pictured are the yogurt (I call it yogurt, but it was made with kefir grains) and the water kefir.

[Nippers]

If you're worried about the sugar levels, you can reduce the amount of sugar water or increase the number of kefir grains, so the kefir grains have a chance to eat up most of the sugar during the 2 to 3 initial fermenting stage. I don't recommend this because your kefir grains will run out of food and it will stunt its growth.

Or you can drain off the liquid from the initial fermenting stage-- leaving the kefir grains behind to start on a new batch-- and then allow the liquid to go through a second fermenting stage all by itself (without the kefir grains in it) to eat up the rest of the sugar before you drink it.

The problem is that it will not be sweet, either way, so you may not like the taste of it. It can become quite sour if allowed to ferment longer, but that is how you get rid of the sugar.

The kefir grains need the sugar to keep growing and moving forward. The second fermenting stage-- left on the kitchen counter at room temperature (not in the fridge) is the best way to reduce the sugar in the resulting drink.