Vangibabe’s Coconut Kefir

Place the coconut milk in a 1-quart glass canning jar (with a screw band) and stir to make it smooth and creamy. Add the kefir grains and stir well. Put a coffee filter over the mouth of the jar and use the metal screw band to hold it in place. Ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. (If your home is super cold, you might need to extend this first ferment for another 24 hours.) Uncover and stir well. Strain the kefir through a fine-mesh sieve, allowing the fermented elixir to pour into a bowl and the grains to stay in the sieve. Push the grains around the sieve with a big spoon to help out the process. Coconut kefir is thicker than milk, so massage the liquid through with a spoon.

Place the first ferment in another clean quart jar with a tight-fitting plastic lid and put the kefir grains back in the original 1-quart canning jar. Allow the kefir liquid in the new quart jar to ferment outside the refrigerator for another 24 hours. Congrats! You now have your zippy, zappy, tangy, wangy coconut kefir. Refrigerate after the second 24 hours.

Let’s go back to when you put the kefir grains back into the original canning jar after the first ferment was poured out. Add another can of coconut milk to the grains and start the process over again. The kefir grains will be good for a few fermenting batches, but then you need to put them into a little dairy milk for a day to refresh them. Drain off the dairy milk and throw it away. This recharges your grains. Any dairy milk residue will be eaten up, so it usually doesn’t pose allergen or sensitivity problems.