Large Portion Cup Live Florida Sun Kefir Water Kefir Grains (Tibicos) Natural

The little cup of kefir base arrived promptly and worked beautifully. I purchased the sugar shown, mostly because it supposedly had extra good flavor, and it certainly is the best tasting sugar I have ever sampled...mild and rich; not too heavy on the molasses taste, yet more than simply sweet. I followed the directions, being careful to avoid any metal, and completely dissolving the sugar before adding the grains. My jar is glass with a plastic lid that is vented to avoid any chance of exploding from pressure. I simply let it sit and day by day it gradually went from dark and still to lighter and lighter (I assume this was as the sugar was consumed). The liquid began moving around a little in the jar as it fermented, and while this was slightly disconcerting, lol, it showed the cultures were active. I began on a Monday morning and removed the liquid that Thursday morning. I think it would have been okay earlier, but this was my first time doing this and I wanted to be sure it was done. I poured the kefir into a different glass container, straining out the grains with a plastic mesh strainer. After that I rinsed them with spring water and stored them in a clean glass jelly jar. The resulting Iiquid tasted a bit like cider to me; pleasant enough as it was, but I decided to drop in some flavored green tea bags. I left those to rest for another 24hrs. The result was really good tasting. I think I may also mix this in with other things sometimes for variety and to up the benefits of other drinks, but it is really quite good as a stand alone beverage. Here’s an update: October 14, 2019 This is my 4th fermenting for my grains and they just keep getting stronger! They started out needing about two or three days, but by now it only takes a matter of hours. I put them in the sugar water at 9:30 am and already at 4pm they are starting to be bubbly. They’ll be ready for use by tomorrow afternoon. These are great! Another update! October 20, 2019 These grains are going wild!!! They started out measuring about 1/4 cup but they have now grown to over a cup in volume. It used to take a couple of days to yield just shy of a quart of kefir. This batch, however, using the same recipe as for the quart, I got a full half gallon of fizzy product in about 4 hours. I didn’t increase any of the ingredients other than starting with more spring water. I will never buy anyone else’s grains again!

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)

I ordered my first batch of these grains with high hopes, as I had already tried some dehydrated ones that just couldn't ever really take off. The grains were shipped immediately, but they were hung up somewhere in the USPS system and not arriving when expected. I waited and waited, and I knew after a week they were probably lost and would no longer be viable by the time I received them (IF I received them). I contacted Florida Sun to let them know my concern, and they were amazing! They immediately refunded my money and told me to order them again and that they would send me double the size originally ordered. AMAZING customer service! It wasn't even their fault, but they took full responsibility anyway. So they immediately sent out the next order of them, which arrived in about 5 days - Along WITH my first batch that had clearly been just hanging out in the USPS truck (long story, but it was indeed obvious). So now I have 3 of the batches of water kefir grains, so I decided what the heck, I might as well try the first batch as well just to see if it would work. I started 3 jars and followed the very clear, detailed instructions provided with the grains. I labeled them with the old/lost grains vs the new grains so I would be aware of which ones were "dead." Much to my amazement, all 3 jars took off and were happily bubbling away within just a few hours! I went through a longer first ferment for 3 days, flavored for second ferment, and I was rewarded with perfect, delicious, refreshing, fizzy water kefir! The grains multiplied in the first batch and are doing amazing. I very highly recommend this company and their grains. They package and ship them out very professionally, and the grains are healthy and alive (and huge!) upon receipt. Their instructions were very detailed and easy to understand. Note: The photo is the initial setup I did with the double batch they sent me as a replacement and the first batch that was still alive after 11 days in shipping. I have made 3 batches of water kefir out of them since the initial setup, and each one is amazing (lemon/ginger/honey is my favorite flavored one so far).

These water kefir grains have been rockstars. I got them started the same day I received them, following the included instructions exactly. Within days, they were off and going, producing water kefir, and they've multiplied like crazy. In less than 3 weeks, I've already dehydrated 2 batches of around 1/2 to 3/4 cup of grains, and have 1/4 extra currently, just a few days after pruning them down to 1/2 cup (which is what I use to brew 2 quarts at a time). I've followed the maintenance instructions of adding 1/8 tsp basking soda to every other batch, and I've let them rest for 24 hour in the fridge once, after about a week and a half. When I started them up again, I was nervous because it took them a couple days to wake back up, but they finally did and they're back to producing and multiplying. I use organic cane sugar from Costco and distilled water where I add back 1/8 tsp sea salt, 1/8 tsp real baking soda, and 30 drops of concentrace minerals per gallon. I keep the jar on a brewing & fermenting heat pad that keeps the jar at around 75 degrees during the day (our house is set at 70-72 during the day and 65 at night). The first or second batch tasted like apple juice, I think because of the molasses' influence (unsulphured molasses is required to get them started), but once that was out of their system, they've produced neutral (good)-tasting water kefir. I mention this because in a review, someone had mentioned that the water kefir tasted like apple juice which I didn't particularly want. I had had some different water kefir grains previously that made water kefir I really enjoyed, and I didn't want apple-juice tasting kefir. I decided to try these anyway, but I also ordered water kefir grains from a different company (Kombucha Kamp) so I could for sure have neutral-tasting water kefir. Big mistake. It's been nearly three weeks and I'm having a terrible time getting those grains going. But these Florida Sun kefir grains, as I said, were super easy to get started, have been multiplying like crazy, AND they make wonderful-tasting water kefir.

This was my first experience with water kefir grains. It was a total success. I did my research well before buying this and had absolutely no problems whatsoever. The grains were super healthy and produced good, carbonated kefir on the 2nd batch. The grains come extremely well packaged inside of a little balloon, inside of a round package, inside of a ziplock, inside of yet another ziplock. No chances of leaks which was very much appreciated. Tracking information for the package was provided and was accurate. Arrived before expected. The grains smell a little funky upon opening. But this wasn't a shock to me as, from what I've read, they had basically been starved for the period of shipping time as well as not maintained at ideal temperatures (I bought in the middle of the summer). I poured the grains into a baby food jar and strained any and all packaging liquid off. From there, I transferred to a quart size mason jar. I added 1/2 a container of non chlorinated water, 1 cup of warmed water with sugar dissolved into it, and topped off with additional water (wanted to make sure the warm water wasn't too warm for the kefir). I place a paper towel on top and screw the mason jar ring around the paper towel. 24 hours later, The first batch was dumped just to be on the safe side. The second batch was consumed 48 hours later with total carbonated yummy success. What I routinely do (and these little suckers are multiplying and happy!)......... I have now used turbinado, brown sugar and muscavado with success. I have never used white sugar (read that there are not enough minerals). I ONLY use non-chlorinated spring or well water. I allow the kefir to go about 24 to 36 hours on the first ferment. I then strain off the liquid leaving just a little in the bottom so none of the baby kefir cultures are dumped out (probably why they are so successfully multiplying). I again add 1/4 cup sugar and water to the mason jar in the same manner described earlier, and start the process over (I have kept the kefir to 1/4 cup to be on the safe side - I currently have one and a half quart jars going. My original 1/4 cup of kefir has almost doubled since I bought a couple months ago). I take the liquid from the first fermentation and put it into plastic PET bottles. I add lemon, oranges, limes, ginger, mint, vanilla, you name it (next on my list is 1 tsp of rootbeer extract), cap it, and allow it to ferment another 24 hours. This makes it carbonated - almost as well carbonated as soda. So after 48 hours I have a kefir soda to drink, or I place it in the fridge if I have too much, and drink it the next day. It's never made it past 4 days without being consumed by us. When I've needed to take a break because I have too much kefir, I feed the kefir and put it in the fridge for a few days. It slows down fermentation and yet the liquid is totally drinkable. Like sourdough, I don't think you will get good kefir if you do this all of the time, but if you need a break, it's worked well for us. After removing from the fridge, the next batch of counter kefir seems to take about 36 hours, not 24, to ferment. I would not hesitate to purchase from this seller again. The culture was healthy and is thriving.

Let me preface with - I am not a novice when it comes to Kefir grains and the only reason I needed to purchase more grains was due to traveling out of country for a few years and I didn't want any problems passing threw customs. Unfortunately the person I left my previous grains with didn't keep up with them. That said, these are the worst grains I have ever had. After 5 attempts of trying to reactivate them as per the sellers included instructions I reached out to them and they simply told me to do the same thing again as if it was somehow going to change on the 6th try. Needless to say it didn't work! To be fair, I do live in the mountains of Colorado and the grains are from Florida where the elevation, temperature, and humidity are the total opposite. Giving those facts I decided to throw every trick in the book at these grains in hope that they would finally acclimate. Kefir grains are very resilient so I thought I had a good chance, but I am at the point where I might just order grains from a different supplier. Pros: - There is really only one pro but it won't be of any use unless you want to sell a crap product. These grains for some reason like to grow, yet ironically they don't produce much kefir nor eat much sugar. Even after 4 days at 82 degrees the water is just as sweet as plain sugar water. Cons: - Very low activity. There is no sign what so ever that they are feeding. No bubbles, No floating or Bobbing. The only sign is a very slight change in smell. - Useless customer service. The responded quick upon first contact asking for pictures and details on how I feed the grains, but after I sent the pictures and explicit feeding details, they decided to take a couple days to respond back telling me: "I know you already did it, but just add molasses again and they will be fine". Bottom line - there are better companies selling Kefir grains. Really the only reason I ordered them on amazon was because I was already on the site ordering other products. If you are a beginner I would highly recommend you go with a company that has an online community that supports them. If you are experienced I just recommend you find another supplier that will take responsibility for the product they send you. Of course you can always issue a charge back if they refuse to make it right, which I may do, but being a small business owner my self I am going to wait and see how they respond to this review.

I will never buy from anywhere else! Let me tell you a story: Years ago, I started researching water kefir. I used to be a type 2 diabetic and was on my way to changing my entire diet. I purchased a water kefir starter kit and was well on my way to healthy soda. I went through the process of re-hydrating and all that, and afterwards I was drinking the water kefir soda daily...even sharing with friends. I love water kefir and the benefits. Anyway, I had to stop making kefir for a while and lost the grains. I had always read that it's best to buy live grains...but, when I first started I wasn't clear on that. In my head I thought "I don't want to buy something that someone has already used...blah blah blah." Now, after using grains I get it. I don't have any fears of how they could be contaminated and all that. I should have read more, but my "I don't buy used products" mind took over. That brings me to this review: I bought these because they are organic and I trusted that they've been kept in organic sugar and all that. First off, the shipping is super duper fast! I hope it works out that well for everyone, because they arrived like a week before the shipping date. So, the grains came in a cool little packing bag, inside another zip-lock bag and a rubber balloon and a plastic ramekin. Pretty well protected, and I'm already used to the yeasty odor they produce. So, I'm off to start using them. 4 cups of water, 1/4 cup of sugar and the grains. Well, in about 12 hours the water is yeasty and the grains are about doubled in size. Now, (because of my first experience with the dehydrated grains)...this wasn't registering in my head (that I had more grains). It's embarrassing...so bear with me. After about two batches, they are ready "I think" to make kefir. I keep trying and trying to make it, but they are all too yeasty. I always add organic raisins, and they were floating in about 6 hours now, and this shouldn't be happening. After about 4 days and all these failed kefir attempts I started searching the web on how to get rid of the yeast. (More minerals), but then it hits me that I have a LOT OF GRAINS! Again, it's embarrassing that it wasn't registering every time I changed the water...(I had more grains)...so I UP my batches of water and sugar to 6 cups. It doesn't help at all. THEN, it hits me again...to look at how many grains I have. I'm now at 1 3/4 cups of grains! That's unbelievable! I will never do dehydrated grains again. They worked, but they were not as healthy and alive as these grains here...and they didn't grow at all, like these do. They maybe doubled in a few months...but then that stopped. For those of you that know how to make kefir, I only need about 1/4 cup of grains for 4 cups of water, so I almost had too many grains right after revitalizing these. I was using 1 3/4 cups for 6 cups of sugar water. By that measure, I'm sure the kefir was ready every day in about 2 - 4 hours. LOL. Anyway, I will never be able to use all of these grains. My dog gets some, but now I'm going to have to start giving them to friends. The are amazing! I'm telling you they were plump and ready right out of the mail and grew over night in the first batch of water. If you have ever only bought dehydrated, you are in for a surprise. I have 1 1/2 cups of grains stored right now and it hasn't even been 2 full weeks!

These grains are packed wonderfully and the grains look great. However there are some issues that keep me from giving the experience a 5. If I weren't an experienced water kefir maker I might have killed off the grains if I interpreted 'cover the jar tightly' to mean' screw on the lid so no more air can get in'. You want a cover that breathes but will keep out gnats etc. And it definitely \\is false to say that kefir making 'requires a minimum of 76 degrees.' That might be ideal for fast growth, but isn't necessary. After all, when you go on vacation and you put it in the refrigerator while you're gone, you must put some sugar in the water because it'll ferment , though very slowly, there. And if it ferments at 35 degrees, it's going to ferment at 70. The brewing bag was a nice idea, but was way too small. Here are some points I learned from a yahoo forum--- Bottled water labelled as spring water might really not be, or might come from a polluted spring. If you don't have access to good well water, try dividing your grains in half and putting them in different glass jars, one with a well-known brand of spring water and the other with tap water that was drawn at least a day ahead and left in an uncovered, wide-mouth container. If the city water contains chlorine, most will be gone by the time you use the water. If however your city uses chloramine instead, the water will slowly but surely kill your grains. However depending the time this takes, you may save money by buying new grains periodically rather than buying bottled water. A second ferment will get you stronger kefir water. You do this by removing the grains from the kefir and letting the formation continue for a while. Of course you put the grains into fresh sugar water right away, too. If you want to end up with a drink that has lemon, orange, or other citric or acidic liquid, it seems best to wait to add them until the grains are removed. They don't like acid, so if you put them in an acidic liquid you need to minimize the damage by using baking soda to neutralize it. When your grains have increased a lot, you can use any excess to make kefir kraut, which is sauerkraut made without all the salt. Traditional krautmaking uses salt to retard fermentation until the good bacteria in the air can take over. Using kefir grains does this job instead. You can add salt to taste once it's made if you care to. I 've found that shredded carrots make an excellent fermented food.ō