Added Molasses

[boilerroom]

Howdy folks, thanks for the forum, and the join.

Been making water kefir, but decided to try a teaspoon of fancy molasses instead of some of the sugar. The ferment seems to want to go on forever, haha. Will the addition of molasses prolong the fermentation? Also added a piece of lemon with this experiment. Anyone share some wisdom with this newbie please?

[boilerroom]

ANother part to this question I guess, would be, as long as there are bubbles, the grains are being fed right, and not starving to chance of an imbalance of bacteria, and yeast? Thank you.

[boilerroom]

And yet another question? If I decide not to use juice to carbonate, how much sugar per cup of finished kefir is acceptable to use please? Thank you. I would like to throw some ginger in this batch I had the lemon in for example with out any juice?? How much ginger per cup of finished as well? A piece the size of a quarter perhaps? Thank you.

[Frankie1]

Hi,

Generally molasses won't slow down the ferment. It typically speeds it up due to increased yeast activity. Sometimes though if there's just too much heavy sugar it can make the overall ferment slow. You mentioned that you took out some of the sugar. It's possible that if you took out too much sugar and only added a teaspoon of molasses, it may not be getting enough sugar / nutrients. I would recommend doing your regular recipe and then adding a teaspoon of molasses on top of that and see how it does. With my water kefir, I've noticed that lemon does slow down the overall ferment, so it may even be that.

Bubbles show good yeast activity. The best way to tell how its doing is just to taste it. It should be semi-sweet at the end.

For the ginger, I think you can use about 2 quarter sizes (about 2 inches) for a quart size batch.

[boilerroom]

Thank you for your kind reply Frankie, all what you said makes perfect sense, grains are healthy, and growing, so I think we nailed her so far.