Bottling your homemade water kefir is an exciting step in the fermentation process. It’s when you can infuse flavors, add carbonation, and create a ready-to-drink probiotic soda.
In this post, we’ll walk you through each step of bottling your water kefir, ensuring you get the desired taste and effervescence. So, let’s get started on the next step in your water kefir journey!
If you read our previous post on how to make water kefir, you know that if you want carbonation, then you’ll need to do a secondary fermentation.
During the primary fermentation, plain sugar water is transformed into a probiotic rich liquid, aka water kefir.
During the Secondary fermentation, plain water kefir is transformed into a flavorful, carbonated beverage.
In this post, we’re focusing on taking the finished water kefir from the primary fermentation and bottling it up, flavoring, and carbonating for a secondary fermentation.
Bottling your water kefir serves a few purposes.
First, bottling is required to create carbonated water kefir. When using proper bottles, bottling provides a sealed environment where carbonation can build up but not escape. When CO2 can’t escape, it dissolves into water kefir, which, in turn, carbonates it! Carbonation adds so much brightness, texture, and flavor to the finished product.
Second, bottling provides secure storage to place neatly in the fridge or travel if you want to bring your water kefir to work or share it with friends.
Third, bottles are the perfect place to add flavor, away from your kefir grains; more on this later.
If you want carbonation, you must use bottles with lids designed to hold pressure, like swing-top or stout bottles. New brewers often overlook this crucial detail. Bottles with just airtight caps are not suitable for carbonating water kefir. They will not hold or capture the building pressure of the CO2 that you need to carbonate water kefir. Airtight lids keep ambient air outside and air from inside from escaping. The problem with these lids is that they don’t hold pressure, so they leak once CO2 pressure builds within. The result is either low or no carbonation. So, if you want full carbonation, do yourself a favor and get bottles with lids designed for the job. We carry bottling kits and bottles designed for this job, but any bottle with lids designed to hold fermentation pressure will suffice. Each bottle style pictured below is designed and made for secondary fermentation, so this is a great place to start.
To get carbonation in our water kefir, we must feed the yeast sugar in a closed environment, i.e., a bottle. Adding sugar, fruit, or juice to the bottles starts the 2nd ferment as the yeast will start to feed on the now available sugars. As the sugar is consumed by the yeast, they will release CO2. In primary fermentation, the CO2 escaped through the breathable cloth cover you used on the opening of your fermentation jar. Allowing the CO2 to release is why you will never have carbonation after the primary fermentation.
Since this time around, we have a sealed bottle, the CO2 has nowhere to go. Now, the CO2 will build up inside the bottle, which in turn forces or dissolves the CO2 into your water kefir, carbonating it.
Carbonation and flavoring go hand in hand. We can get creative when adding sugars to carbonate. If we want plain carbonated water kefir, we just add cane sugar. If we would like blueberry water kefir, just add sugar, i.e., fresh blueberries or blueberry juice, or follow our blueberry water kefir recipe
Bonus – the fruit or fruit juice both flavor and provide the sugar needed for your yeast to carbonate. After adding sugar/flavorings to the bottles, we’ll let them sit out, tightly capped, for 2-10 days at room temperature (75-85°F) and burp your bottles as needed.
As you may have noticed, we are capturing carbonation in a glass bottle. In other words, the CO2 is building pressure inside a sealed container. Burping water kefir alleviates pressure, which can get ugly if we allow it to build for too long. An essential step in this process is to “burp” your bottles after one day to gauge carbonation. This is done to check how the pressure is building and release excess CO2.
To burp, quickly pop open the cap and immediately put it back on, releasing excessive built-up CO2. If you don’t do this, you may end up with a geyser, or even worse; you may wake up at 4:30 AM to the sound of the infamous “bottle bomb” and waterfalls of water kefir dripping down your cabinets (I speak from experience). But this is the worst-case scenario, in reality, most people will burp too often.
