The Kefir (B)Logs

Okay okay okay, I know I'm doing ANOTHER post on kefir, and that I'm a total nerd, but I just can't help myself. I'm loving this stuff! And I think about how I can improve things all the time. Once you all know me better, you'll understand. When I get interested in something, I'm the type of person who has to know EVERYTHING about it. It's an insane drive, and an annoying one at times. Mostly to my friends and family who have to suffer through hours of kefir/birth/breastfeeding/rabbit genetics/ gardening/ homesteading/ alien conspiracy theories (OMG, how do they put up with me?) talk. And by "talk" I mean dissect everything into little bitty pieces, chew, swallow, regurgitate, and often vomit the information back up and talk about it again from another perspective.

So, now that you know how I operate, it should not come as a surprise that I am going to do water kefir experiments. I'm talkin' the whole nine yards... I'm going to outline a hypothesis, procedures, have a control, etc. For realz. And it's gonna be awesome. Eventually I'm going to figure out a way to selectively breed? harvest? feed? my water kefir so that I get super-kefir. Not sure if this is possible yet, but I'm totally going to try!
The best part of all of this? My 5 year old is totally with me. What an awesome homeschooling project!

So, I'm going to be keeping track of my experiments on paper and let you know the results right here on the blog. Some experiments I have thought of so far are:

• Lemon vs Lime vs Oranges vs Grapefruit vs No citrus/ use small amount of previous fermentation instead and their effect on the water kefir's propagation, taste, fizz
• Apricots vs Prunes vs Figs vs other dried fruits and their effect on the water kefir's propagation, taste, fizz, health
• Warm vs Room temperature water and their effect on the water kefir's propagation, taste, fizz, health
• Molasses and white sugar vs eggshells and white sugar vs demerara sugar vs turbinado sugar vs date sugar
• Juice ferments

• Stirring vs not stirring
• 24 hour vs 48 hour vs 60 hour first ferments

I also am going to research a few things. One rumor I heard was that water kefir makes unsafe drinking water safe. I've also heard you can live off of water kefir alone. Also, I haven't been able to find good information pointing to water kefir's origins. I've also been researching some helpful tips and tricks to having healthy water kefir... Which is where my next blog post comes in! Enjoy and stay tuned! I promise I will write about something OTHER than water kefir next week. Promise :) In the meantime, if there is any other experiment you'd like me to try, comment below and tell me about it!