The grains prosper - Part 1

Many people are au fait with milk kefir, but I find most have never heard of the water-based version. So, what is it? Tibicos.org explains it best:

Kefir is a hand-crafted, effervescent, cultured and enzyme-rich probiotic beverage filled with friendly microbes to help balance your inner-ecosystem.  This beverage can only be made with live Kefir Grains.  The term Kefir Grains describes the look of the culture only and can be a misnomer as they do not contain any grain such as wheat or rye.   Water Kefir Grains are cultured in a solution of sugar and water.  Water Kefir Grains can also culture in natural fruit juices containing sugar or young coconut water.  

Our family became hooked on water kefir around eighteen months ago. My sister smuggled a jar of grains into her suitcase when she flew over for a visit (nothing above the law I promise...just trying to sound dramatic). Some three or so months ago, my grains started showing signs of stress - they'd shrunk down in size considerably and appeared mushy...but worse still, the grains weren't performing as normal, our kefir wasn't culturing as well as it had previously. I knew that with proper care, water kefir grains should last indefinitely. Miffed, I wondered where had I gone wrong?

I was considering throwing our kefir grains to the chooks, but couldn't bring myself to do it; who knew how long it would be before I could source some more grains?  Instead I gave up making kefir and focused solely on saving my grains. And amazingly it worked!

With considerable intensive care my kefir grains have been nursed back to good health. They are now going gang busters!!! They are growing so rapidly I'm giving a bowl full to the chooks (who LOVE them) every few days. These revived grains are huge, happy and best of all, productive. So once again, we are enjoying delicious water kefir and benefiting from it's AMAZING health properties. If I may be so bold as to insist you follow that last link (Crunchy Betty does such a great job convincing her readers they are really missing out if they aren't experiencing water-kefir).

And just today I read this on the Cultures for Health website...

We strongly recommend against allowing the kefir grains to culture for longer than 48 hours as over time it will damage the grains by potentially starving them (particularly in warm weather when the culturing process is sped up due to the heat).   

Ah ha! Maybe over Summer I'd been unknowingly starving my grains! There were certainly times when I  ignored my culture for more than two days (yes, well...we were at the beach a lot).