SIX Brewing Bags Plus Large Portion Cup with 33% MORE Live Florida Sun Kefir Natural Water Kefir Grains

Let me start out by saying that I am no water kefir novice. I've been brewing on and off for five years and have experimented with tons of different sugars, water types, minerals, fruits, etc etc. I have also read just about every resource out there on the subject. What can I say, I'm a big water kefir nerd!I've purchased water kefir grains from several different sources in the past and I'm totally blown away by Florida Sun Kefir's grains. I've had them less than a week and they have already outperformed every other batch of water kefir grains I've purchased in the past (from other sellers). They are superior in the following ways:1. Most kefir grains arrive in a "distressed state" and you have to baby them for a few weeks to get them to start making good kefir, and even longer to start multiplying. These plump babies started fizzing and multiplying the same day I received them! In 6 days they've about quadrupled in quantity, I kid you not. I have such an over abundance of kefir grains that I've been giving them away to neighbors and even feeding them to my dog (yes its safe to do that and its good for your four-legged friends too).2. Shipping was super duper fast! Normally I'm not a stickler about fast shipping but when it comes to perishable, living organisms shipping time is important, and I was blown away by how quickly these arrived (ordered on a Friday and received on Monday). The quick transit time probably was a big factor in why these grains arrived in such great shape and went right to work.3. Another reason these grains probably did so well immediately after their travels is that the seller is a packing genius! OK so now I'm going to bash the ignorant reviews that complain about the "balloon" the grains came in. First of all, it's not a balloon like the kind you blow up at parties, it looks more like a black sausage casing tied off at both ends, that's the best way i can describe it. I can't verify what material the "balloon" is made of, but I can verify that it is odorless and looks like it is intended for food storage. YES, there is a smell when you open the "balloon," but that is the grains you are smelling. They have come a long way in an airtight container and it got a little musty in there from the trip, it's NORMAL. The smell goes away after making your first batch of water kefir. Secondly, for those of you complaining about said balloon, it is a GENIUS and very inventive idea for transporting grains and this is why: Water kefir grains give off carbon dioxide. If you leave them in a sealed container without opening the container occasionally to relieve the pressure of the building carbon dioxide, the container could explode. This actually happened to me when I was attempting to transport some grains myself from Florida to Texas (I swiped some of my dad's grains while I was visiting him and put them in a jar in my checked luggage). Big mistake! When I got to Texas the jar lid was off and my grains were wearing my clothes ;). My point is, balloons are STRETCHY and therefore can ACCOMODATE EXPANSION from the gas the grains are releasing. The lesson here kids is that the "balloon" your grains arrive in is protecting them from exploding all over the box they were shipped in. So embrace the water kefir balloon packaging people and stop leaving this seller negative reviews because ot it!! In addition to the balloon, the grains are further protected from harm during transit because the seller then puts the balloon in a plastic food storage container and then puts the storage container in two thick zip baggies, further ensuring that no explosion takes place. Kudos to you Florida Sun Keir for your water kefir packaging genius!I have already consumed two batches of water kefir from these grains and can verify that they do produce excellent kefir.Now for anyone who might be on the fence about buying from this seller because this product is not Prime eligible and are tempted to buy dehydrated grains from Cultures for Health instead, let me save you the headache and tell you DON'T! Before buying these grains, I actually did buy from cultures for health and I will never, ever purchase dehaydrated grains again. Without writing an entire novel about it, let me just say that I should have listened to the warnings made by people on the interwebs about the awful performance and inevitable death of water kefir grains that have previously been dehydrated. I babied the **** out of the Cultures for Health grains and still they slowly disintegrated into oblivion. I actually started questioning my kefir skills until I purchased these grains and realized I wasn't the problem! So do yourself a favor and get your grains from FLorida Sun instead. The reason this seller can't sell these grains as Prime is because in order for a seller to make their products Prime eligible, the product needs to be stored at Amazon and shipped by Amazon. Obviously storing live water kefir grains in an Amazon warehouse is impossible, so this seller did the next best thing by offering free FAST shipping. And I mean faster than Prime shipping. Cultures for health sells their grains prime but at the cost of having to dehydrate them to give them a shelf life on an amazon warehouse shelf. Listen to what this water kefir nerd tells you : dehydrated water kefir grains suck!I will agree with one negative point a reviewer made: This seller's PDF of water kefir info is God-awful in terms of spelling, grammar, and organization of information. They're great at growing kefir grains, not so much at publishing literature. But don't let that sway you from buying the grains, they're awesome. If you want good info about brewing water kefir, which water and sugar types to use, and recipe ideas, the Cultures for Health website is a great resource for that. Just don't buy their dehydrated grains or you'll be sorry ;)Maggie (Nick's wifey)

These water kefir gains could not be better! They come super fresh, and with almost a half a cup!In the past, I have tried to dry greens, but they never worked out for me, and I created an odd concoction of yeasty disaster.These grains on the other hand, they come ready to go and are super easy to work with!My go to second ferment flavor is a raspberry ginger, you can’t go wrong. It’s so fizzy and delicious. It tastes like an artisanal soda!As for me, I think the gut microbiome so complex so it’s hard to associate one item to fixing everything, but I think in the arsenal of gut health champions, water kefir has been a pretty great front runner for me.

Tutorials great! Customer service non existent. I moved surrounded by sea water. Wouldn’t brew until I used chanson water filter. They hated city water decanted and well water too saline. Filtered water growing great.

I was a little hesitant to get them because I made kombucha before and it was such a hassle that I eventually gave up. Now with the kefir grains it’s so much easier and I’m happy that I tried.

YOU NEED UNSULFERED MOLASSES for these to work. That’s why I took a star off. It’s not clear when you purchase them that they must be used right away and absolutely must have molasses to wake up. I tried with brown sugar, but nothing was happening after 3 days. Finally got the molasses and it started fizzing like it should after another 24 hours. It should be made clear in the purchasing information that you must buy molasses like it says on the direction cards.After 3 days it tastes like sugar water, so I am hopeful that I can turn it into some natural pop that doesn’t taste like kombucha. (Kombucha tastes like mild vinegar to me.)

Amazon expected Aug. 7th but they came in on the 4th. I followed the directions provided on starting it and if it fails I'll update with that information. I'm no expert so I'm giving it 5 stars simply because of the fast shipping speed and the fact that it smelled alive.Edit, 1 week later, also it's August and hot as $%^&* here: I've tried multiple times to upload a timelapse video but it takes too long. I've gone from that quarter cup of grains to somewhere approaching two cups. I started in a quart jar and now I'm in a 1 gallon jar. I've been using synthetic filters that fit under wide mouth lids I had lying around from growing mushrooms and it's worked great. I have the same thing for the 1 gallon jar. Either I'm a natural at this or it's really easy. The average temp of the space I'm fermenting at is 75-78 freedom degrees, according to the timelapse and the thermometer I had in the background.1st day I used C&H brown sugar and a crushed egg shell I boiled for 20 minutes. I'm using water distilled from a distiller and I thought it didn't have a carbon filter but it does so the water is super clean. So that got me worried about nutrients so I poured the liquid out after one day and bottled it (more on that later...) and got some turbinado stuff (the recommended brand happened to be at the local store) as well as some raisins and a lemon. I squeezed the lemon slices before I put them in there, some people say don't. But the pH isn't gonna change much from that volume of liquid. 48 hours later the raisins were turned back into grapes (they rise and fall like a lava lamp, it's kinda cool to watch) and I bottled that with some apple juice (don't do that, again more on that later). The next 48 hours I repeated but used blueberries. The blue berries don't work as well so I switched back to raisins 48 hours later. The raisins are devoid of flavor after 48 hours and the blueberries still taste like blueberries and raisins are cheaper. But I increased the amount of lemon and I scraped the outer layer off the lemon before I cut it into thin slices to increase the surface area to expose it to the calcium in the peel. At first I was doing it in two quart jars and I got to thinking that the sugar volume is hard to quantify like that since it tends to stay at the bottom of the solution so I went ahead and poured them into my 1 gallon fermentation jar and filled it up with basically the same recipe. It's probably a little sugar heavy but it's super frothy at the top and I'm going to let it go an extra day instead of 48 hours before I bottle to try and reduce the sugar content.The reason why is because that first bottle tasted weird so I left it sitting there on the counter clasped in these swing cap bottles I got. I forgot about it sitting there... the second one I poured the apple juice in and left it for 48 hours in the bottles and they damn new blew up when I opened them. Sprayed the kitchen with soda-ish sugary liquid. VERY dangerous so don't do that. Tasty, but dangerous. I always open them outside now. I realized I probably had a bomb on the counter so I opened that first one and it blew up too. It blew the swing cap right off and almost through a window (hence why I open it outside now). So now I'm much more careful about the final sugar content and I don't let it sit in the 70+ degree room for more than a day in a bottle. After that it goes in the fridge where it can slow down.I had some grains fall out onto the floor when I first poured them out so I put that egg shell from the first ferment and some of the first liquid left in the bottle into a jar and forgot about it. It multiplied as well but the pH ended up around 3.3 - 3.8 and I thought it might start dissolving itself. The egg shell should buffer the pH a little, but I'm willing to bet you can get it lower than 3.0 which is pretty acidic.I can tell there's alcohol in it, but how much I don't know. If it ONLY produced alcohol from the sugars I might could take a specific gravity and figure that out. If only I were a chemist. Also if you drink a whole bottle at once, be prepared for a nap. The stuff will make you sleepy.