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Now that I have part of the kefir granules I wanted, and the other part of them, the milk kefir grains is in the mail. Quite literally I got an e-mail from Paypal that they're in transit, I'm getting nervous about what I don't know, and about when to do what. I received the water kefir granules from my angel in Texas.
The water kefir "grains" are beautiful to behold. Most probably because I'm looking at the real thing for the first time in my life, but only after having seen them in photographs previously. They look like cooked grains of white rice, but less opaque. They are not translucent. I can't see all the way through them, but I can see into them to some surprising degree. Iridescent hues of soft pastel colors with no beginning or end. It was startling to me to look at them resting in the ziplock sandwich bags. What surprised me was that I was consciously gazing into the innards of bacteria. Living creatures that I was taught to fear as if some plague. So, now I'm gonna deliberately eat them? Dear God... the end is near!
The water kefir "grains" are beautiful to behold. Most probably because I'm looking at the real thing for the first time in my life, but only after having seen them in photographs previously. They look like cooked grains of white rice, but less opaque. They are not translucent. I can't see all the way through them, but I can see into them to some surprising degree. Iridescent hues of soft pastel colors with no beginning or end. It was startling to me to look at them resting in the ziplock sandwich bags. What surprised me was that I was consciously gazing into the innards of bacteria. Living creatures that I was taught to fear as if some plague. So, now I'm gonna deliberately eat them? Dear God... the end is near!
My compassionate friend also sent instructions on how to mix the ingredients together. It's a short list. 1/4 cup of table sugar. One teaspoon of molasses. Stir them up in a quart of water. Add one dried fig, and an unsqueezed slice of fresh lemon. Then, three tablespoons of kefir grains are added and the top screwed on lightly. This concoction is supposed to ferment and produce gas bubbles. Some instructions I've encountered suggested that putting a piece of cloth or a paper towel over the top and use a rubber band to hold it in place to let it breathe is ideal.
After acting like she could care less for weeks, my sister-in-law (a much more intense health nut than me) seemed to get excited that I had managed to acquire some mother culture grains to generate my own self-propagating kefir. I shared with her my concern for these living bacteria to die in transit to my house because of the heat out in my rural mail box.
I was afraid that my mail box out on the paved road would act like an oven and bake the granules like a loaf of bread, so I engaged my sister-in-laws assistance in keeping an eye on my mail box, upon the occasion when she got her own mail in the adjacent mail box to mine. She promised she would.
Yesterday morning there was a false alarm. There was a package, but when she brought it over here we discovered that it was not the package with the water kefir grains from Texas. Within the hour I checked my mail box again, and there it was. I was expecting one of those Priority envelopes, but it was a small cardboard box.
I took the box straight over to my brother's house to open it in front of my sister-in-law because just previous she seemed real interested in seeing what I got, you know, in a detached, off-hand manner. I opened the box on her kitchen table. I was pleased it was cardboard because that might have provided some insulatio. Inside the box, however, the grains were wrapped in a doubled-up sheet of foam insulation.
Cindy had been thoughtfully cautious about protecting them from the hot weather. I unwrapped the foam insulation and inside the grains could be seen clearly through the zip lock bags. She had double-bagged them for security's sake. I only know her through a brief e-mail exchange, but I'm beginning to like this person's practicality.
My sister-in-law had snatched up the brief instruction sheet and read it while I was exposing the goods. Then, she laid down the paper and left the room. When she came back she had a half-pint of black strop molasses, and a bag of dried figs. I lacked for nothing now. I was ready to mix up a batch and see if it exploded.
First, I had to get some water from the spring. Charcoal filtered and distilled water just won't do according to the pundits. Chlorinated water is designed to kill bacteria. The kefir grains are clumps of bacteria. Probiotic bacteria. Friendly bacteria. Killing them with chlorinated water is anti-productive.
The water in the artesian spring down by the corn field is loaded with minerals. When it's pumped into the house and you take a shower in it the soap don't bubble up so much. It's hard water. Minerals is what causes it to be called hard water. I went and dipped up a gallon jug of it to make my first batch of sugar water kefir. I'll be surprised if there are not enough minerals in it for the grains to propagate.
When I assembled everything I needed in my kitchen it only took a few minutes to mix the water and sugar and molasses and stir it up good. Then, I added three heaping tablespoons of the kefir granules, and as an absent-minded afterthought, I added the dried fig. I put a single ply of a paper towel over the top of it and held that down with one of my stainless steel sprouting screens to release the pressure of carbonation.
Satisfied that it could breathe and that no bugs could get into it, I set it on a ledge behind my stove to watch what happened. It was around four o'clock yesterday afternoon. I've checked it out a couple of times. The kefir grains have settled to the bottom of the solution. I'm looking for bubbles to be drifting to the top like I saw in a YouTube video, but I don't actually know how this works.
My current question is how will I know when this batch of water kefir is done. What are the signs? What are the omens? When do I remove the kefir grains from the solution? How soon is too soon. How late is too late and it gets funky? I can't be drinking no funky stuff.
I posted my questions on a discussion list, maybe someone will answer me.
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