[music playing] hi. how are you doing? it's russell james. in this video, i want to showyou how to make amazing coconut kefir. and you may have found thisvideo because you were looking to learn how to make kefir. or this might be new to you.
either way, i'm goingto walk you through three different steps. so the first thing i'm going todo is show you how to make more grains. when you've got a small starteramount, i'm going to show you how to grow more. then i'm going to show youhow to make water kefir. so we're going to usecoconut water. and then, we're goingto take that on.
and i'm going to show youhow to do a second stage fermentation on the coconutwater kefir. we're going to put somefruit juice in there and make it fizzy. so these are the kefir grains. and you can see they'rekind of just-- they're not grains becausethey're wheat. they're just grains becausethese little blobs of goodness that are really going to turnour coconut water into this
delicious probiotic drink. now, you can get thesefrom a friend. anyone who makes kefir and hasgot grains will definitely give you some. and they'll donate some, becauseit's so easy to grow them, as you're goingto see in a second. and you can also them on ebay,if you don't know anybody that grows them. so if you're looking on ebayor anywhere online to buy
these, you would want to searchfor water kefir grains or sugar kefir grains. and i'm also going to put thisinformation down underneath this video as well. so you've got it inwritten format. and they'll be a few extrasunder there as well, just to clarify this process. because i know it can be alittle bit of a scary thing when you're culturing things.
and you're unsure whetherit's safe to drink. and it's just a livingthing, so it seems a little bit scary. so as i say, i'll walk youthrough that process. so the first thing we'regoing to need to do is take our water. it's about one and half litresor between six and eight cup of spring water preferably, nottap water, just because, a, you don't really want todrink tap water, depending on
where you are. but generally, you'renot going to want to drink tap water. and the reason is because it'sgot impurities in it. and so that is obviouslygoing to affect our kefir grains as well. so this is the purestwater you can get. you don't want to use distilledwater because there's just no mineralsin there.
so the kefir hasn't gotanything to work with. so spring water is ideal. now, to grow our grains is aslightly different mixture from what we would use to makecoconut water kefir. so you may or may not like theresulting liquid, the flavour of it, from thisgrowing stage. but if you don't likeit, still keep it. keep it in the fridge. it's still got the goodprobiotics in it.
and you can always add it tosmoothies in small amounts. so you can still get thebenefit of it but not necessarily taste it. i'm also going to show you howto make kind of a ginger beer from it as well. so that's another ideathat we can go into. so we're going to start offwith our coconut sugar. now, you can use white,refined sugar. but if we're using sugar,ideally, we want to be using
the most nutritious sourceor version of sugar that we can find. and that's generally any of thekind of raw, unprocessed, darker sugars. so that's coconut sugar. and what i found is that, togrow these grains really quickly, a mix of two differenttypes of sugar, so we've got the coconut. and we've got organic,blackstrap molasses her.
so the molasses is the mostnutritional part that's left over of the sugar. and you can see it'sreally sticky. but once it's been here--ideally, we'd leave it in there for about 30 minutes, justto kind of soak in there. and once it's been in thereabout 30 minutes, you'd be able to stir it up. and it would dissolve. but for the purposesof the video--
you can spend allday doing this. for the purposes of the video,i'm just going to put the grains straight in there. and not let it soak. and we'll stir it afterwards. so the final part of thejigsaw, if you like, is bicarbonate of soda. so i'm going to use an eighthof a teaspoon of and what this does is keepsthe ph of the liquid just
right during the fermentingprocess. so you've got maximum chance ofgrowth, maximum chance of keeping these healthy. so what i'll do is just givethat a little stir. as i said, if that had beensitting in there for longer at this point, the molasses wouldhave dissolved better. but it'll still work. and then, into that liquidwe're going to pop our kefir grains.
now, you could just use yourfinger to do this. i'm going to use a spoon. now, i get a lot of questionsabout metal spoons and metal instruments and using with kefirgrains, because reactive metal can damage the grains. but stainless steel is theone metal you can use. so as long as you know it'sstainless steel, you can use a stainless steel spoon, astainless steel sieve, when we come to do that.
but if you're unsure,just use plastic. so in they go. now, at this point, theywere just kind of fall to the bottom. and what we need to do is-- i'll take this off ofthe one i'm going to show you in a second. but i just like to usea nut milk bag. if you're into raw food, you'reprobably quite familiar
with a nut milk bag. you can find these online veryeasily as well, any kind of mesh that's going to allow thatto breathe but not let any insects in there, if youhappen to get a rogue ant just finding his way to yoursugary water mixture. and we're going to leavethat for two days. so two days is reallythe ideal. you can sometimes get awaywith three days. but if you do too many three-dayfermentations,
you're going to ruinthe grains. they just tend to not thrivein liquid for too long. and actually also, two days, asfar as taste and probiotic culture is concerned,is really ideal and growth as well. and what you're going toprobably find is that, over the two days, you get between100% and 150% growth. so you should find that yourgrains at least double. now, what you'll also find afterabout 24 hours is that
these grains start to kindof rise up to the top. as they produce gas, as theygrow, they all kind of rise up to the top. you might find them suspendedhalfway between the top and the bottom, also floatingaround on the top. and that's a good sign. it just means they'reproducing gas. they're growing. and actually, you can sit andsee them kind of moving up and
down after 24 hours. it really looks likea living thing. so this is kind of what you'llget, the point you'll get to. as you can see, we'vegot some grains floating on the top here. when kind of put it down, youmight notice that, when you do that in your mixture, that youget the bubbles coming up, the gas bubble from the grainsdown in the bottom there. and you can probably seethem kind of floating
around there as well. so that's all a good sign thatyou've had some growth. now, what we need to do fromhere is the strain them off. so you can see what the fullygrown grains look like. so as i mentioned, i'm justgoing to use a plastic strainer and strain those off. ok. and then you get thatresulting kind of-- they look like bigger blobs atthis point, because they've
been growing. and they kind ofstick together. so from there you just want togive these a quick wash off. again, i do know people thathave done this with tap water and done ok. but i just prefer a little bitof spring water over there, give them a quick wash. you can see they're a little bitdarker than the ones i'm going to show you in a secondthat have been in coconut
water, because they take onthe colour of that sugar. and now these, you'll get to apoint, probably, when you're growing them. and you won't know whatto do with them. so you won't have anyoneyou can give them to. and you won't needto use them. so you can keep them actuallyjust in a mixture of water and sugar, so six cups of water withjust a little bit sugar to keep them fed and putthem in the fridge.
you can keep like a weekin that condition. or you can actuallyfreeze them. you can freeze them forup to six months. the thing about when youunfreeze them is, it's going to take a good couple of batchesto get them reignited, if you like. so they've been in the deepfreeze for a while. when you do this over and overagain, it's going to take care probably three to four weeks tokeep doing that a couple of
times a week to really getthem started again. so you've got options. or you can start up your ownlittle cottage industry selling them on ebay likeeveryone else seems to do, which is a good thing becauseit means everyone can get access to the kefir grains. so this liquid, likei said, you can put this into smoothies. it doesn't taste amazingas it is.
but what we can also do is turnit into a ginger beer, which i've done here. now, you can probablysee there. we've got bubbles forming. and when i open this, you neverquite know how fizzy it's going to be. so this has been at roomtemperature for two days now. and if you get a bottle likethis where the top seals really tightly and doesn'tlet any gas out--
i'll open that in a minute. but if you get one that doesn'tlet any gas out, you're going to end up witha nicely carbonated drink. so a good strong sealis what you need. so i've got my funnel. i'll pop that in there. now, for the second stagefermentation and for extra fizziness, you want to adda little bit more sugar. and something i didn't mention,actually, in that
first part, is that there arepeople that have done tests on these things and have weighedthe amount of sugar beforehand and then reduced the liquid downand weighed the resulting sugar at the end of thefermentation, at the end of the two-day process. and it reduces the amountof sugar by about 80%. so if you're worried about allthe sugar actually, the grains, that's what makesthe fermentation happen. they eat the sugar.
so we'll put a littlebit more sugar in here to get this fizzy. so that's a tablespoonof sugar. and then we'll put our sugarkefir liquid in there. and then, ideally, we wantto leave about an inch from the top. and you can already seethere are bubbles starting to form there. and then i'm going to take someginger and cut the skin
off of that. and obviously, you just wantto cut that down so that it fits in your bottle. ok, i'm just going to take alittle bit of that liquid out. obviously, after i've putthe ginger in there, it's taking up space. i just want to leaveroom for it to create that gas in there. so again, that justfalls to the
bottom, seal it up tightly. and then, once the gas has hadan effect on it, it rises to the top like that. so let's get this one opened. and so ideally you want todo this over a sink. like i said, you can never knowexactly how fizzy this is going to be. but when you've done this likei just did, you can actually just put that straightin the fridge.
it will still fizz up. it just slows theprocess down. but if you want a reallycarbonated drink and you want it quicker, then do itat room temperature. and obviously, in the summer,you'll get a much fizzier drink, because it'sgenerally warmer. you'll find actually that,if you don't want it to get too fizzy-- there you go.
it's starting to fizz up now. if you don't want it to get toofizzy, you can come back to it and burp it every day,just let the lid off. and you'll find that thegas just escapes. and it's all good. so this will go inthe fridge now. and it will actually keep formonths in the fridge. and you know it probablywon't last that long. so i'll just enjoy that from thefridge as and when i want.
and the next thing i'm going toshow you how to do is the coconut water kefir. so the coconut kefir is actuallya lot simpler and tastier in my opinion. and the reason, as i mentioned,we don't just keep doing coconut water is, there'snot enough sugar in there really ideally to keep thegrains happy and growing. but if you just use one lot ofgrains and do the sugar water mix and then do coconut waterand just alternate between the
two, you'll have some reallyhappy little grains. and they'll just reproduce andmake amazing coconut kefir for you, for the restof their days. they just keep going,by the way. the only time they're going todie is if you mistreat them. so look after them, and they'lltreat you well. coconut water, ideally, if youcan get young thai coconuts, that would be the premiumway of doing this. nutritionally, fresh coconutwater is better than the
pasteurised out of the carton. i'm actually using thepasteurised on for this. because i couldn't get thefresh coconut water. but we're really restructuringand re-energizing and adding our own nutrition to thisanyway, in terms of culturing it and adding probioticsto it as well. so even if you don't drinkpasteurised coconut water, using the pasteurised coconutwater for this might be something you wantto consider.
so we've got the coconutwater there. now, you can seethe difference. this is a two-day oldfermentation. and it hasn't reduced. it was just different amountsof coconut water in there. so you can see it'smuch cloudier. and that's our finished drink. and we'll strain thatoff in a second. and i'll show you how white thegrains have got, compared
to the ones that havebeen in the sugar. and so it's reallyvery simple. we take our grains, add themto the coconut water. and then, i actuallytend not to add any sugar at this point. i'll just let themdo their thing. you could if you wanted to adda little bit more sugar. but because we've treated ourgrains well and we've got them really active, it's going to beabsolutely fine in there.
so that again will just go toone side, two days, 48 hours at room temperature, again witha nut milk bag or similar on the top there. let's put that to one side. and now we are ready tostrain these off. so exactly the same as before,but this time, as you can see, those grains are much whiter. and that's how they would lookif you were using white, refined sugar in thefirst stage.
that's kind of what they'dlook like as well. so i'll just put thoseto one side. and you can drink thisjust as it is. you can keep it really simpleand just slice up a little bit of ginger again, maybe a coupleof slices of pear and just put those inthere as well. or you can add fruit juice,which is what i'm going to do. so a quick note on thisactually, adding fruit juice at the first stage is not a goodidea, because the grains
themselves don't actually likethe acidity of particularly orange juice or any ofthose citrus fruits. but adding it at the secondstage-- because there's sugar in here, this is going toprovide an extra second-stage fermentation. so i'm just going to put theorange juice into there. it's just one of my favouritesis coconut kefir and orange juice. so essentially, we'veadded flavour.
we've added more sugar. and then we're going to takeour trusty funnel. again, leave a bit of spaceat the top there. and just like before, seal itup tight, two days, room temperature. the probiotics, even withoutthe grains in there, it's going to start eatingthe sugar again. and it's going to fizz up. and again, you might just wantto burp it every day and just
let the air out. or if you're looking for areally fizzy kefir, then you can just leave it sealedfor two days. you could actually justput it in the fridge again at this stage. that would be fine. what you'll find is that, again,as the kefir eats the sugar in the orange juice, it'sgoing to get less sweet. the longer you leave it, thesour it's going to get.
so you might even, just beforeyou drink it, if you want it sweeter, just add a little bitmore juice or sugar again. so that's kind of whatit looks like. again, you can keep this inthe fridge for like two months, but definitely bestserved chilled out of the fridge, maybe withsome ice cubes. and this is one that i've hadgoing for a little while now. and then, if you cankind of hear-- but it's very gassy.
so this was coconut kefir with--actually, i juiced up some honeydew melon. and then i added a littlebit of sugar as well. so all this kind of stuff inhere is actually some of the fibre from the honeydewmelon, which is fine. so we'll open this. again, you just want tobe really careful. you can see that's reallyfizzing up. so that's kind of howfizzy it can get
after a couple of days. and you just want to just bereally careful about how much fizz you let out. there we go. so there we go. don't be scared of it. it's actually a funthing to do, to see your grains growing. and you get just this reallydelicious drink
resulting from it. i would actually go fairly easyon the drink as well, to begin with. maybe you just have a reallysmall glass worth to begin with, until your body getsused to having that much probiotic culture in there,and all that goodness. and you'll find that if youdrink too much of it in one go, that it will just be toomuch for your stomach. so that's probably, even now,the most amount of kefir that
i would drink in one go. so just start out with a fewsips, enjoy that, and let me know how you get on.