How to Make Water Kefir Soda (2024)

How to make water kefir soda with a simple tutorial. Making homemade fermented water kefir is fun and easy!

Water kefir soda is one of our favorite drinks year-round, but especially during the warmer months. I love having a healthy, fermented, fizzy drink available for my kids!

We started making water kefir soda quite a few years ago (here’s my original post about it), and it’s always a hit with my family.

What is Water Kefir?

If you’re not familiar with water kefir, you may be wondering what it is. Water kefir is a probiotic drink made with water kefir grains.

Water kefir grains are not the same as milk kefir grains, but they both contain probiotics (although milk kefir has more strains of bacteria).

If you’ve heard that probiotics are good for your gut, water kefir can be a delicious way to help increase the good bacteria in your gut.

So, basically, water kefir is a fermented, probiotic drink that is fun to make and tastes great!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may make a small commission at no cost to you. Read my full disclosurehere.

Supplies Needed to Make Water Kefir Soda

In order to make your own homemade water kefir, you’ll need a few basic supplies.

• water kefir grains
• brown sugar
• non-metallic fine mesh strainer
• swing-top glass brewing bottles
• funnel

How to Make Water Kefir Soda

To make water kefir, we’re going to start by making a sugar-water solution that will feed the water kefir grains.

1. Heat 1 cup of water until warm but not boiling.

2. Remove from the heat and add 1/2 cup brown sugar. Stir until completely dissolved and let cool completely.

3. Add 3 cups cool filtered water to the sugar water mixture and stir to combine.

4. Put 1/4 cup water kefir grains into a half-gallon jar.

5. Pour the sugar water into the jar with the grains.

6. Cover loosely with a cloth (secure with a rubber band) or use a coffee filter secured with a rubber band.

7. Let sit on the counter top (or another warm place in the kitchen—between 68° —85°) to ferment for 24-48 hours. The length of time it takes to ferment depends on the temperature of your kitchen. If it’s cooler, it will take longer, and if it’s warmer it won’t usually take as long.

8. After 1-2 days, strain the kefir using a fine mesh strainer or a double layer of cheesecloth. Now it’s ready to drink and enjoy!

When kefir has finished culturing, make a new batch of sugar water and combine with the kefir grains, following steps 1-8 above.

Optional Step

Optional Step for Fizzy Water Kefir Soda: Now you can add flavorings or do a second ferment to make it extra fizzy.

For a second ferment, add finished water kefir to swing-top brewing bottles, leaving plenty of head space at the top. Add 1/4 cup of juice to the water kefir in the bottle for added flavor (grape, apple, and berry are a few examples of juice flavors you can use).

Let the water kefir set out on the counter top in the flip-top bottles for a second ferment. This can take from 1-3 days. How long it takes depends on the temperature of your kitchen. Be careful when you open the bottles after this second ferment, as the water kefir soda can get very bubbly and even explode! Try to open the bottles very slowly, away from your body.

Enjoy!

More Recipes to Try

• Water Kefir Cream Soda
• How to Make Mint Tea From Fresh Mint Leaves
• Sugar Free Sparkling Strawberry Lemonade
• How to Make a Sourdough Starter From Scratch

Printable Recipe

What to Do With Extra Grains

Once you start getting into a routine of making water kefir, your grains will start to multiply, sometimes very rapidly!

When this happens, you can give them away to friends, feed them to your chickens, or put them on the compost pile.

Also, you’ll need to multiply the recipe above as your grains multiply. As you have more and more kefir grains to work with, you’ll need to make a larger batch of sugar water.

How to Take a Break from Making Water Kefir

When life starts to get busy and you feel like you need a break from constantly making water kefir, you can let your grains rest until you’re ready to start back up again.

For taking a short break of a few weeks, make a fresh sugar water solution like the one above, using 1/4 cup sugar to 1 quart water.

Add the grains and the sugar water solution to a quart jar and add a lid, screwing it on tightly.

Change out the sugar water once a week.

This should allow the grains to rest and be strong and healthy for about 3 weeks in cold storage.

After this time is up, strain the grains from the storage sugar water, and place in a new batch of sugar water. It may take a few batches for the kefir grains to become active again. Just keep changing the water and feeding them.

For the times when I’ve needed a break longer than 3 weeks, I just go ahead and purchase some new water kefir grains and start over.

Supplies Used in This Recipe

• water kefir grains
• brown sugar
• non-metallic fine mesh strainer
• swing-top glass brewing bottles
• funnel
• half-gallon jar

Related Post

Water Kefir Cream Soda Recipe

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