Niraj Naik shows how to make coconut water kefir at home using water kefir grains and coconut water. The fermented drink costs under $1 per serving and contains a trillion probiotics, far more than most commercial supplements.
Questions this video answers
Niraj Naik (the renegade pharmacist).
June 17, 2016.
About six tablespoons of demerara sugar per 1 litre.
Typically 24–48 hours; up to ~72 hours is possible but may risk grain disintegration.
Around 20 billion (20 x 10^9) at most.
Chapters
Hi, this is Neeraj, AKA the renegade pharmacist. Now today I've got a very, very exciting thing to show you and it's actually one of my most passionate subjects right now and that is probiotics. Now you've probably heard about probiotics before. Well, did you know that we actually have more bacterial cells in our bodies and on our bodies, around our bodies. In fact, we have an aura of bacteria around us than we have human cells. Alright, so we actually outnumbered by bacterial cells by a ratio of 10 to 1. And most of that bacteria is actually very good bacteria, beneficial and essential actually for a lot of the life functions such as our immune system, our metabolism, our digestion, and even shown potentially to influence our moods themselves. So issues such as depression, anxiety, things like that can be a result, a cause of having a really disruptive bacterial flora, a natural ecosystem. Also that the immune system of our gut is directly linked to levels of inflammation in our body. So if we don't have the right bacterial flora inside our digestive system, it can lead to inflammation elsewhere in the body. We which can lead to things like autoimmune conditions and other degenerative diseases which we're suffering from all over the place in the west. So how do we fix that? Well, we can either go out there and buy probiotics or we can buy like all these kind of high street yogurts and things like that that claim to be filled with these good bacteria, or in fact in reality a lot of those kind of yogurts out there you find in the mainstream are actually full of sugar, full of artificial ingredients and not good for you at all. And the bacterial count is quite questionable. The other thing you could go out and do is actually buy probiotics in a capsule form. Again, whether that's good quality or not is questionable. And whether they are even alive still, whether they're active still after being transported all around the place is also questionable. And the fact is that we have trillions of bacterial cells in our body and the most you're going to find in a high street probiotic supplement is around 20 billion. And it's not really going to make much of an impact into our health unless we take large, large amounts of it. And there's only one supplement on the market that's actually pretty good, which is called VSL3, which has been shown in clinical studies to actually relieve things like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. That's the only one that I really recommend is VSL3. However, we can actually make our own probiotics at home. And one of the most incredible ways of doing that is with a drink known as kefir. Kefir has been drunk for thousands of years by cultures all around the world, specifically, like places like Eastern Europe, where it's a big part of the culture. And some of the oldest living people in the world have it as a staple part of their diet, which shows, again, that fermented drinks like kefir and things like lassi in India, which is buttermilk, can be very beneficial. You also have things like kombucha, which you may have heard of as well, which is very similar to kefir. So I'm going to show you how to make your own kefir from home, which costs you hardly anything, like less than a dollar per drink. And it's gonna give you literally trillions of good bacteria rather than just a billion, which isn't really that beneficial at all. But this is really good for you, and it's so easy to make. This is how you do it. So first ingredient, most important ingredient is the water kefir grains. Now, these grains you can actually order on Amazon, and you'll find there's various sources on there. Make sure you look for good reviews and, you know, something that's been around for a while. So you're guaranteed to get a good quality sauce. And you'll find that these will multiply a lot because the fermenting process makes the bacteria thrive. And you're going to have loads left over to then hand out to your friends and family, which is really useful and cool, and also means that you can keep reusing it over and over. That's. That's why it's so cost effective to make your own. And what you do with these is you literally.
Stick them into.
A jug like this.
And that's your base ingredient. And this is the stuff that's going to ferment the next ingredient, which is coconut water. Now, I use as much as possible as natural source coconut water as possible. When I'm in Thailand, I use real coconuts. As I'm in England, we gotta make do with these bottled ones. Some of them have natural sugar added to them, like this one, which is okay when you're making kefir, because what happens is the water, kefir grains ferment the sugar, they thrive off the sugar and, and create all the goodness as a result. So it's okay to have a little bit of sweetened coconut water, but if you're going to just drink coconut Water, I recommend you don't get sweetened brands, but this one is unfortunately, but it's cool for this purpose. And then what you want to do is pour in about a litre of coconut water.
And then the next ingredient that we need, very important, is sugar. Okay, now I go for the most natural form of sugar possible. And this is Demera sugar, which is often used in cooking. It's like even more raw than brown sugar that you find. It's like the most natural, unprocessed, unrefined sugar that you can get. And this is what's going to feed the water kefir grains, which will then ferment it and release all the goodness into the coconut water. So we just pour about six tablespoons worth of sugar into our mixture.
To one liter. So if you're making one liter of kefir, then add about six tablespoons of sugar to that. So then of course we're gonna stir this up, mix it so the sugar dissolves into the coconut water.
And now you might actually be thinking, oh, my God, that's a lot of sugar. That's like, you know, more sugar than probably what you put in a can of coke. Well, actually what happens is the bacteria ferments that sugar, which means there is no more sugar in the drink. So it's actually pretty much a sugar free drink at the end of it, once the fermenting process is over again. Okay. And to get it to ferment, it's so simple. All you need to do now is put on some cloth on top, seal it and leave it for about.
24 to 48 hours. 48 hours will really ensure that you're getting all the sugar fermented and you're getting lots of good bacteria thriving inside the mixture. You can go to about 72 hours. It'll be even more richer in the bacteria the longer you leave it. But after 72 hours, you got to be a bit careful because what might happen is the kefir grains actually disintegrate a little bit into the mixture the longer you leave it. So you don't really want that to happen. So try and stick within 48 hours as the kind of length of time you leave it. You can just seal it with a rubber band on top and just put it away to one side. And then when you come back to it, you're going to get a mixture which you can now flavor in different ways. So what I like to do is actually put ginger and fresh lemon juice into the drink to add an extra bit of flavouring to it, and it's almost like a ginger beer taste that you get at the end of it and it tastes really nice and refreshing. And because it's fermented, there's a natural fizz to the drink as well. So it's like a refreshing.
Soda beverage at the end of it that you get that's naturally carbonated through the bacteria. Which is great, is awesome because it tastes as refreshing as a soda drink, but it's actually good for you. Doesn't have all that horrible sugar and additives and preservatives in it, and it's not artificially carbonated, so. Or it hasn't got other ingredients in it to make the taste different, like the phosphoric acid. This is actually pure natural fizzy goodness that you're going to get in the drink.
So then the end result, what you get is a drink like this. And I like to get these bottles. You can even get these bottles, 250ml bottles from Amazon too, just glass bottles. And you can literally seal them with a lid like that, which actually keeps the fizz in there so it stays fizzy and refreshing. And I then stick into the fridge and it's really cold and super refreshing, filled with ginger and lemon juice. You can even flavor in different ways. As experiment, you can add other fruit juices to it, create your own flavor drinks when you drink it, it's really refreshing.
Do you want to have a go cameraman, see what you think?
