Probiotic in a Bottle: Water Kefir Soda

The long awaited Water Kefir Soda recipe . . . I act as if it is my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s recipe. 

Not even close.

Why water kefir soda?  It’s healthy.  Think of it as good bacteria in a bottle.  No, that might gross some people out.  I know . . . a drinkable, lactose-free probiotic. 

The Hottie craves it.  My boys love it.  I like it because it is carbonated (being a recovering Diet Coke addict of 6 years now).  Naomi has yet to try it directly. 

What do you need? (Mind you, there are a VARIETY of ways to make this refreshing beverage.)

Stage One Ingredients: 

• spring water (don’t use tap water, water filtered via reverse osmosis, or carbon filtered water)
• organic blackstrap molasses
• dried ginger
• minerals (Peter Gillham’s or a clean egg shell)
• organic raisins
• organic cane sugar or succanat
• plastic colander (you don’t want your grains to come in contact with metal)
• mason jar with lid
• water kefir grains

I’m going to assume you have grains and have followed the directions to hydrate them.  My grains are from Cultures For Health.

Now, my grains are slightly discolored due to the fact that I immerse the grains in a high mineral content solution.  For this reason, I edited the kefir grain photo to resemble what they look like if you use cane sugar.   (OK, use your imagination.)

These squishy sugar eating symbiotically inclined organisms will live indefinitely. You can use them again and again and again . . . and really should be called “friendship grains.”  They are the grain that just keeps on givin’.  If your grains become small, then they are depressed and you need to resuscitate them.  Email me if you are having this problem and we can trouble shoot.

  A happy, clear grain.

Caveat:  remember who you are getting the recipe from . . . me . . . . Granola Mom . . . who struggles to follow recipes exactly.  Thankfully, water kefir grains are forgiving.

Directions

• Pour approximately 6 cups of spring water into a 1/2 gallon mason jar.  Add about 1 tablespoon of raisins and three pieces of dried candied ginger. 

• Add a capful of Peter Gillham Minerals (or a CLEAN egg shell -- add the egg shell after you shake the contents in the mason jar—see below.) Kefir grains adore minerals. 

• Provide additional food for your water kefir grains by including 1/4 to 1/2 cup of succanat (or cane sugar) and one tablespoon of blackstrap molasses (optional).  The amount of sugar products I use depends on how much grain I include in the mason jar.  If I only have approximately 2 TBLS of grain then I most likely would only use 1/4 cup of succanat or cane sugar and 3-4 cups of water.   The larger my grain supply the more sugar I use.  (The jar below has a 1/2 cup of sugar and a handful of grains.)

• Screw lid on and vigorously shake, in an attempt to dissolve most of the sugar.

Note: If you use cane sugar and omit the blackstrap molasses, then your water will look like the below picture.

(By the way, never use honey as it is such a healthy God made food substance that it slowly kills water kefir grains due to its anit-fungal, anti-bacterial properties.)

• Unscrew lid.  Add grains.  How many?  Good question.  Depends on how much sugar  you already shook up!  Once again, water kefir grains are productive.  They multiply like rabbits.  If my grains are happy – meaning they are full, fat, and fluffy, then I add roughly 1/2 cup of sugar products and a generous handful of grains.  (I think I am slightly repeating myself here.)
• Put lid back on loosely (or tight if you are an experienced water kefir maker).  If you screw the lid on tight, the carbonation process will begin to happen prematurely. 
• Allow mason jar and contents to sit on your counter for 1-3 days. 
• Once the raisins float to the top and you see your water kefir grains bobbing up and down, you know that your grains have completed their task.  (I’ll have to see if the Hottie Hubby will write a blog post regarding what makes the raisins float.)

At this point you can make one of three decisions.

1. Bottle and put in the refrigerator.
2. Bottle and carbonate.
3. Flavor, bottle, and carbonate.

We typically flavor and carbonate.  There are a variety of ways to flavor your probiotic drink. I have chosen the quickest route to flavoring and the taste that receives the highest accolades in our family – flavored and carbonated water kefir soda.

Stage 2 Supplies:

• Cascadian Farms Grape Juice or your favorite 100% juice
• old kombucha bottles or Grolsch bottles

• colander and bowl

Stage 2 Directions: Flavoring your Water Kefir Soda with Fruit Juice

• Separate your grains from the fermented liquid

• Add an almost equal amount of juice to the water kefir liquid.  This really is to taste.  The ratio I use is probably 2:1 (2 parts kefir water to 1 part juice).

• Bottle.  Be sure to screw the lids on tight.

• Allow to sit on your counter for 24 hours.  The longer the beverage sits, the more carbonation you will have.  Be careful . . . this beverage has been known to end up on my ceiling!
• Refrigerate.
• When you open your chilled bottle for the first time, I would recommend placing a cloth over the bottle top and a bowl underneath.  This way you will prevent soda from soiling your shirt and walls, but also collect the soda that runneth over.

Enjoy!  Leave a comment if you have any questions or if you have another variation! 

An OPINION on how to Stay Healthy or Get Healthy

I am often asked what one should do to GET healthy after being on a round of antibiotics or a marathon season of drugs and diseases. I have collected my thoughts and have come up with my layman prescription for extended health between the occasional cold or sinus infection. This isn't to say that you won't get sick, because the tips are preventative in nature. Remember that there is no quick fix, only wise choices that accumulate into a healthy gut and an active immune system.

We will start from the standpoint that your body has been worn down by conventional medicine. When you are done with your last round of antibiotics, get “your child or you” on a good probiotic. A probiotic, according to Wikipedia and the World Health Organization, are "Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host." You will take a pretty strong dose for about 10 days and then you can do more of a maintenance dose after that, or make sure to eat either plain kefir or yogurt daily. You can find some good bacteria at Whole Foods or any local health food store. I usually buy the boys’ probiotics online at GPRX. It is an affiliate company of Jordan Rubin, who wrote the Maker's Diet. Also, at Whole Foods you can also purchase Jarrow and Nature’s Way, which are two other probiotics that I have used. The key feature you want for your probiotic is a powder or pill that has several strains of bacteria and can be stored at ROOM TEMPERATURE and stay alive. I do tend to lean towards Garden of Life products only because they are strong and helped to keep the hubby healthy when he was in India. Note: if you look at Garden of Life products in the store you may have a heart attack. (For this reason, I order them online because I get coupons from them frequently.)

About every week or so, do a hydrogen peroxide rinse in your ear.

You can also use colloidal silver. I buy a product called Sovereign Silver. It acts as an antibiotic, but doesn’t kill the good stuff. Many think it is quacky, will turn you blue, or is fake. However, we have seen tremendous results from using it. You can also use it on cuts, too. I have tried other brands other than Sovereign Silver, but have not seen the results. So at the first sign of sickness, I typically use the Colloidal Silver for a few days, and give it to everyone else to ward off an infection in them. I warn you some people are scared of this product, but after all of my research and discussing it with our doctor and midwife, I see no problems with it. This is what was used before pharmaceuticals. Not as strong, obviously. Actually for this reason, our kids eat off of silver spoons!

Lastly, I would recommend using Thieves Essential Oil, which does happen to be something that I can get you. Pure therapeutic grade essential oils can and do act as an aide to healing the body and preventing infection/decay. However, you must be sure to buy a quality essential oil. The only one I support is Young Living. Essential oils can act as drugs, but without the harmful side effects. Even the hubby is somewhat convinced on the use of essential oils and has seen results.

Thieves has a story. It supposedly was used by robbers during the Bubonic plague. They would create this herbal mixture and cover their faces with a scarf doused in this mixture and go rob people who were sick. Yet, they never got the plague. Once caught, the police offered a plea bargain if the robbers would confess the recipe. So we now have Thieves Oil! My mom uses this religiously and has not gotten sick through our recent sickness. Thieves Oil doesn’t replace God, but I think we can use it to naturally support our bodies and help them function as God intended. Our family uses this oil before going to church or out to the store, in a diluted mixture and apply it to the bottom of our feet (because it transmits to the rest of the body quickest). For example, put a pealed bulb of garlic between your toes and you will taste it in your mouth in a few minutes! When the kids get sick, they take one drop orally with 4 ounces of water or juice. Once again, do not ingest any other essential oil, unless it is Young Living. If someone has an infected hang nail-on goes the Thieves! I use it for deodorant and mix it into my cleaning spray. The uses are numerous and benefits even more so. Young Living, where I get my oil, also carries Thieves Throat Drops—wow, they don’t taste great but are AMAZING in their ability to fight infection. We experienced dramatic change in our symptoms after sucking on these powerful drops. I will let you know, good Essential Oils are pricey. As preventative care, though, it is cheaper than going to the doctor. I became a distributor, which made the oil MUCH cheaper.

Oh, another helpful thing is to completely avoid white sugar and flour and processed food. When you consume white sugar it suppresses your immune system for about six hours. So if you go out somewhere and there is a bug, you open yourself up more to getting sick. The goal is to create a healthy happy gut. Eating fermented foods also increases the good bacteria floating in your body, like homemade sauerkraut, kefir, yogurt, kombucha, etc.

So, the two things we probably do most regularly are Thieves Oil of a morning and probiotics. I also think a dose of Cod Liver Oil is helpful to support the immune system.

This may be more than you wanted and it also may make you think we are quacky—but these are the preventative things that I feel God has revealed to us and for the most part, WHEN I am religious to practice them, I see a direct correlation to our health. However, I must admit I got quite slack on this and all of us got quite sick!!!!!! And ended up on antibiotics ourselves. So I am back to probiotics and Thieves right now.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions. I really am not an expert nor a Doctor. But I have found these things helpful in the life of our family. If you are interested in essential oils or would like to order some, let me know!