I have been experimenting with various ways to make coconut water kefir lately thanks to Cocospure for plenty of coconut water to work with. My first step was to rehydrate some water kefir grains I had been given by a local fermentation fan last year and get them bubbling. I had previously made coconut kefir with dairy kefir grains which also works quite nicely, but I was eager to try the water kefir grains since I knew they love mineral and sugar rich water.

The water grains really loved the coconut water, although it did take them about three weeks before they started to reproduce. They loved them so much that I only had to leave them in overnight before straining them instead of the 48 hour cycle that plain water kefir likes. To be honest I didn’t really like the smell and I found that my personal preference is to use dairy kefir grains to make coconut water kefir. I also discovered that when using dairy grains to culture the coconut water, if they start to weaken you can add them back into dairy for a while to get them reactivated. Just give them a couple weeks before using in coconut water again.