How to Make Water Kefir Vinegar
Water kefir vinegar is easy to make by simply keeping your first ferment brewing longer. This typically takes 5-10 days.
Follow your first ferment process, but instead of draining the water kefir and removing the grains after 24 – 48 hours, leave the brew for 5 days. Taste the ferment, you will know when it has turned to vinegar when the water kefir tastes quite sour. When it suits your taste, remove the water kefir grains and put them straight into a first ferment to feed them. Pour the liquid into a jar and keep the water kefir vinegar in the refrigerator to slow the fermentation process. The water kefir vinegar is full of live probiotics.
Water kefir doesn’t go bad. If it is in a sealed bottle with no chance of cross contamination, the live cultures will slowly continue to eat up the sugars in the drink and eventually the drink will turn to vinegar. The yeast in the fermentation process produces alcohol, and when the ferment is left for a longer amount of time the bacteria is able to consume the alcohol and turn it into acetic acid.