Do you always have to refrigerate your cultured veggies when they are finished fermenting or can you put them into a canning jar with a tight canning lid & let them naturally seal on the shelf???
Thanks ~~Really New at this Culturing ~~but really willing to learn!!!

YCK (Young Coconut Kefir) is just as easy – if not EASIER to make than CVs so let’s figure out what’s going on! Can you please explain to me step by step what you are doing? If you are in the USA, I’d be happy to give you a call so I can walk you through your next batch but I think for starters, if we post the info here, then perhaps others can have the info at hand too. In addition to you and I trying to figure out what is going on with your batches, here is a link to Body Ecology’s directions on how information about Young Coconut Kefir. Also on this link, there is another link in which there are detailed directions of how to make YCK. http://www.bodyecology.com/coconutkefir.php

I spoke with Donna and told her of your YCK issues and she said that she’d be happy to have a new box of starter sent out to you. So if you would email me at: christina@yourinnereco.com
I’ll call Body Ecology on Monday and you’ll have a new box headed your way!

For starters, what sort of coconut water are you using? Packaged or fresh coconut water? If it’s fresh coconuts, what do they look like? Is there a sticker on the box or coconut indicating where it’s from? (ie: Thailand, Hawaii, Mexico)
After you mix your young coconut water and the Body Ecology starters, how & where are you storing the bottles to ferment? Have you been able to use a thermometer to monitor what temp they have been trying to ferment at? How long are you fermenting them? Can you elaborate when you say that they “just aren’t fermenting”? ie: What does it look, taste and smell like? Where do you live / what is the temp where you are current at? Does the temp in your home fluctuate dramatically from night and day?

Perhaps it’s due to the varying amounts of natural sugars in the different types of coconut water but I’ve personally tried to ferment young coco water from coconuts from Mexico and the batch would simply NOT ferment at all. You have to be certain to use YOUNG Thai Coconuts and not the hairy brown ones…you probably already know this but just to be certain, the coconuts that you want to use generally have their green outer shell already removed by the time it gets to our local stores. They generally have a plastic wrap around each coconut and are white with a pointy top and flat bottom (please click on the link I provided above to see a picture of what type is best to use). Usually they come in a box of 9 coconuts; sometimes 12 small ones (if you have a choice, I HIGHLY recommend getting the box of 9!) and you can almost always find single ones to purchase at stores that carry them. Of course packaged water works too but you want to be certain that it’s unsweetened and no additional flavors are added to it when starting out. Although it’s great to experiment with different flavors and juices, I suggest starting out with basic YCK so that you have a baseline of what it’s supposed to taste like. Another note about using packaged coconut water is that some find that they lack adequate amounts of natural sugar to make a great batch of YCK so it’s a good idea to add a prebiotic to them. Body Ecology has a great prebiotic called: EcoBloom. A little goes a LONG way…I add it to all of my fermented drinks, drinks and dressings. If you add a prebiotic to your batches, your microflora will have more ‘food’ to feed off of to them stay alive and healthy.

A common mistake is that people will add either heat up their coconut water too high when making your 1st generation batch of YCK (1st generation means the batch of YCK from the package of starter and coco water) or will add the Body Ecology starters when the coco water is too hot. You only want to WARM UP about 1 cup or so of unfermented coconut water, pour it into your glass bottle, add the BE starters (Body Ecology Starters), then shake it up. The BE starters are incredibly hardy strains so it really works both ways but I prefer to let the 1 cup ‘mix’ sit for about 10 minutes to ‘wake up’ the microflora. Then I will add the remaining amount of ROOM TEMPERATURE young coconut to my bottle until the 1 quart bottle is almost full. I leave about 1″ -2″ of space so that after it’s fermented, I don’t lose precious yummy YCK all over my counter. I shake it all up and will store them in my designated ‘culturing cooler’ so the temp stays consistent.

Microflora prefer to be left alone to do their thing and ferment MUCH better when you allow them a quiet space to make your probiotic rich foods for you. If they are moved around a lot, left in sunlight or if the temp flucuates they don’t seem to ferment as well in those conditions. There were times that I forgot to allow my unfermented coconut water to warm up to room temp…I added refrigerator cold coco water and my YCK took a REALLY long time to ferment as keeping microflora too cool will slow down the fermentation process.

Some may find it ‘out there’ but I love to ask my cultured foods and drinks to be potent and delicious, for the microflora to do their work in our bellies . I’ve been known to get a rubber band around the jar of YCK or CV and write healing or uplifting words (inspired by the work of Dr. Masaru Imoto) and a picture of my client whom I’m making them for. When I have done this without even telling my clients, they always tell me that ‘this batch’ tastes WONDERFUL and something was ‘different’ but didn’t know what.

If you can post how you’ve been making it, then we can get down to it and help you get started on your YCK!
In Love and Light,
Christina Allen