Water Kefir!
Water Kefir. Tibicos. African Bees. These are all the names for the same bacteria and yeast colonies used to make water Kefir. You may never have heard of water kefir, only knowing about it's more famous cousin, milk kefir. But like it's more gad-about cousin, water kefir is a wealth of gut healing, happy tummy making probiotics. Many folks drink it to replace soda in their diet. I like it because it tastes really good and gives me a probiotic boost at a fraction of the cost of probiotic supplements. It is also a great creative outlet for my disposessed chef. I can play around with flavors for pennies.
Here are the water kefir grains. They look different from the milk kefir because these grains eat sucrose/glucose instead of lactose, which is eaten by the milk grains. They look like the crystals you make smelly jelly from, or use to hydrate very dry garden soil. My husband had a less charitable analogy, something made by Walter White. These are rehydrated grains I bought from Cultures for Health. Their website has great information on water kefir and how to rehydrate and use it. Basically I soaked the dehydrated grains in a sugar water solution for 3 days then poured the sugar water off. My kefir was now ready to get to work.
I made up a new sugar water solution and when it was room temp, I added the grains to it, put in a slice of lemon because it gives it a nice flavor and Dom Anfiteatro, the Kefir Guru of the WORLD said to. Then I let it sit for 2 days.