# Tibicos - Water Kefir



## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Guys,

Making mead revived my interest in fermentation. And making kombucha got be hooked. There is another kind of fermentation that should lend itself to a honey, water, juice ferment. It's tibicos or water kefir. And it's produced by a another kind of symbiotic culture like kombucha is.

Has anyone tried it? I'm going to give it try. Here's a couple of links:

http://users.chariot.net.au/~dna/Makekefir.html#Kefir-d-acqua

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibicos

Regards
Dennis

[ January 15, 2007, 02:42 PM: Message edited by: D. Murrell ]


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## Black Creek (May 19, 2006)

i've never heard of the stuff. i read a bit from the link you gave, and i'm very interested so far. i'll need to read up on it some more. 
i kept a kombucha culture going for several years, but lost it when i moved about 4 years ago. i need to start keeping a look out for a new one.


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi newbeematt,

http://www.happyherbalist.com sells the scoby mushroom for about $10. I've also seen them advertised on Ebay but don't have any experience with the vendors there.

Regards
Dennis
Who having sampled his 1 year old mead, thinks it needs a couple more years to mellow out. Yeooow!

[ January 27, 2007, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: D. Murrell ]


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## mattoleriver (Sep 20, 2003)

Dennis,
have you started your kefir yet? Am I correct in understanding that you can use water, juice or milk for your liquid medium?
I've had commercial bottled kefir that reminded me of liquid yogurt. All that I've had has been fruit flavored and I thought it was pretty good stuff!

newbeematt,
I started a kombucha mushroom from a bottle of raw kombucha that I bought at the local Wild Oats grocery. It was simple to do and produced a great SCOBY.
George


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Mattoleriver,

I have been making milk kefir for about a month. And also tried Caspian Sea Yogurt. The kefir is very easy to work with. Fermentation times/temps, etc. aren't critical.

And I like the flavor. It's slightly yeasty, kind of fizzy and tart. Kefir is very stable and the culture is robust. I can produce way more kefir than I can consume when its produced the standard way. Now, I just barely cover the culture with milk. The kefir can be strained after a day. Or it can set for several days without any attention or seperation.

The Caspian Sea Yogurt was much more finicky than the kefir. When caught at the right stage, it was great. But it seems that 2 or 3 hours would be the difference between a great yogurt and one that separated out. I just didn't have the time to baby set it.

I haven't tried the kefir culture for mediums other than milk, yet. But intend to do so.

I also want to try the tibicos, which is a different culture than the kefir.

Thanks for the info on starting a new SCOBY from raw kombucha. I'm going to start a batch that way today, as I've damaged my previous culture by using chloramined water.

The culture slowly succumbed over an 8 month period. The yeast portion survived, but some or most of the bacteria perished. And those SCOBY's are very flabby to almost none existent.

Here's a neat link concerning balancing a kombucha culture:

http://www.geocities.com/kombucha_balance/index.html

Regards
Dennis

[ February 10, 2007, 08:12 AM: Message edited by: D. Murrell ]


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

As a data point, for the first time my last batch didn't have a good balance of bugs. It didn't get infected, but I used an old starter in the fridge and though some of the acids were produced, it's very one-dimensional and not that enjoyable (though very acidic and tart). I'll have to go back to an original culture. That one was perhaps six months in storage.


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## MarcL (Sep 20, 2006)

Kombucha - I've been brewing for about a year now. The batches seem to be hit or miss. In fact, of late - my batches have almost a tobacco taste to them. Not that enjoyable. I "washed" a few of my mothers and started a fresh batch in the hopes of ridding my brews of this taste.

Who has had luck with using honey with these microorganisms? Typically honey is no good for microbes, but fermented sparkling honey water sounds good. . .(and not mead!


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