An Introduction to Water Kefir

Yum yum, who doesn't like the idea of drinking "healthy soda pop"?? As of recent months I have been getting more and more interested in eating more healthy raw food, juicing, fresh food...etc for both adults and babies. Josh is growing older now at 11 months and is a healthy-not-fussy eater. (Thank God!)

Anyway, came across quite a few postings on fermented foods and eventually came across Kefir. So my interest was piqued and I decided to do a little more digging. I was blown away by the amount of stuff on fermentation and how it affects health. Anyways, I decided to zero in on Water Kefir as making and drinking my very own probiotic soda pop sounded like fun. More fun than popping probiotic pills, cheaper (I hope...) then buying Yoplait yoghurt and Yakult!

So spent last Sunday afternoon learning about Water Kefir and doing a hands on preparing and flavouring. I was obviously bombarded with more information than I could comprehend so I consoled myself with the fact that everything is now available online so all I had to do was ask Mr. Google. I learnt that water kefir grains are alive! We also learnt how to prepare the sugar solutions and how different sugars were needed for the grains to thrive. We even talked about the type of water to use and how to give them a coconut bath every two weeks to help them grow and multiply. Lastly we also discussed how creative we could get with flavouring our water kefir using fresh fruits, flowers and greens. Blueberry lavendar or longan goji berry water anyone? Finally we also discussed a little about how traditional Jamu could go hand in hand with water kefir providing a more comprehensive detox and obviously the subject closest to a woman's heart came up. Someone asked the million dollar question, "Can lose weight ah?" Someone testified that by just drinking kefir and jamu everyday, she lost 6 kgs in one month plus. We all sat up and paid a heck of a lot more attention after that. :) 

 So we to trudge on and after nearly 4 hours.I was a happy camper going home with a cardboard box full of goodies as below:-

1. 2 tablespoons of donated water kefir grains in a small glass jar
2. 2 bottles of pear flavoured kefir
3. 1 bottle of cherry flavoured kefir
4. 400 gm packet of Country Farm Organic Raw Cane Sugar
5. 1 small plastic sieve
6. 1 mason jar with handle
7. 2 pieces of cut "Good morning" towels to cover the mason jar while fermenting
8. 1 small glass jar of Tumeric Asam Jawa Jamu to try
9. 10 glass bottles measuring 300 ml each to do flavouring (bought them cheap at RM1.20 per bottle)

I was obviously excited about my "little monsters" and couldn't wait to get home to stare at them and hopefully see them multiply and thrive. Someone else likened them to the popular digital Tamagochi pets which exploded in the 90s where you had to raise an alien egg into and adult creature. Like my little monsters, I am sure they will go through several stages of growth and will develop differently depending on how I care for them. Since I already have an 11 month old son....ala I tak hairan la...hahahaha

Anyway, will continue to write more on my water kefir-ing sometime later this week! Have a good one!