Probiotic Water

crazygreenthumbs

Jan 18

Homemade yogurt. What do you do if you want to get probiotics into your family but everyone is tired of yogurt?

I started making homemade probiotic yogurt last year. It's delicious and everyone in the family agreed. Then, slowly, my husband stopped eating it and then both my sons didn't want it in their lunches anymore. I have added Greek God's yogurt in my kid's lunches since they were in pre-k. This was something I assumed would never change.

Little bubbles at the top of probiotic water mean it's working. This jar was a little too cool so I followed the instructions to fix that, that are below.

So, okay, my kids don't want to eat something because they finally get tired of it. I'm the same. I switch my diet up occasionally: just because I get bored. So, I can't hold it against them. Plus, it takes time and planning to make yogurt, and if that energy is wasted, I refuse to continue to make stuff that will end up going down the drain.

A jar of yogurt that I either need to eat or dump. It's still good, a couple of weeks from when I made it, but eventually one of those two things will happen. Eat or dump.

Our family gets sick, a lot. Like a whole lot. Especially in the late fall and winter. It's bad enough that my kids have to do Saturday school, to make up the hours they were out of school sick, just to graduate that grade. I couldn't figure out why we always got so sick in the fall and winter.

I thought maybe it was just going back to school. Or maybe: we just don't have great immune systems? This is the original reason I started to do so many probiotic recipes. Some of the probiotics create a Bacteriocin-type reaction where the probiotic regulates the gut environment, allowing the good bacteria to flourish while bringing down the levels of bad bacteria. Plus, your bad bacteria don't get used to this situation and eventually become resistant, like they do with antibiotics.

If you are interested in making the yogurt (it's really good, but there are more steps than for the water.) use this link

Different jars of yogurt with different strains of probiotics.

This year, I finally (after 13 years) figured out what is going on with our health. Especially this year. So what is the problem? Cedar. We get cedar fever.

This isn't smoke. This is a cedar tree releasing pollen. Everything gets a yellow pollen coating this time of year, including our lungs. I can write my name on my windshield every morning, there's always so much new pollen! This is such a crazy bad allergen, too. Trees release pollen like this for months and this year has been particularly bad. Cedar is not native to this part of the country, either. I wish there was a national campaign to cut all of these down and get rid of them!

We get raw inside and then every illness in school comes home with my kids. Since cedar season lasts over several months: we get sick, get better, get sick, get better, for those months.

My dad almost lost his slot in flight school when we lived down here, when I was super young.

My dad was deathly allergic to cedar. So I know where part of it came from. But even my husband is on his second set of antibiotics for a second case of pneumonia in just this last month.

Cedar is super, super bad this year. My kids and I are going to go see an allergist, so hopefully we can get some control over our fall/winter constant illness.

You can see why it was really a problem for my kids to decide they don't want the yogurt. The probiotics I was using, attack and kill bad bugs in your body. The pills are too expensive to just take on their own, plus yogurt makes billions of good bacteria, while the pills have maybe a million.

What to do? How do I get these probiotics into my family? They help your immune system and help with gut and brain health. These are very good reasons to consume it. And, if we're constantly on antibiotics for bronchitis and pneumonia how do I regularly inoculate our systems with the good things that get killed with antibiotics?

This is a stock photo, but it feels like this should be our house. I feel like we live at the pharmacy (and urgent care) at this time of the year!

Enter: probiotic water. This super easy recipe creates a probiotic liquid that can be added to anything you are eating (that is cold or room temperature.) Add a half gallon mason jar full of water to one tsp of your choice of raw honey, some probiotic pill contents and you have a probiotic, (sneaky) liquid that can be added: 1 Tbsps at a time, to a lot of things throughout the day.

I am so glad there are people out there creating work arounds for probiotic supplementation!

So, first gather what you need. It's not much. A half gallon mason jar, filtered water (do not use tap water, the chemicals they add to make tap water safe to consume: are made to kill bacteria and fungus, so they are not probiotic friendly.) a jar of your choice of raw honey, a spoon and some way to sterilize all of the equipment.

I make homemade wine, so I have a bottle of star san around all the time. You can also boil water with the equipment in it or pressure cook the equipment for a single minute in your pressure cooker (note, my half gallon jar didn't fit into my instapot or many of my smaller soup cooking pots. I ended up using a pasta cooking pot, because the jar fit sideways and up and down. But you can make several smaller jars. Just make sure the equipment you are using is sterilized, however you choose to get there. Also, you need really clean hands.

My trusty Star San in a pot. It's a sterilization liquid that doesn't need rinsing. Indispensable for wine, beer and mead making.

After sterilizing: add your bottled water to your jar. Mine took a little over 4 single serving bottles of water. Always having a gallon of chemical free water around is definitely a good practice for this and other probiotic ferments.

Sterilize your spoon along with your jar, lid and ring. Dip your clean spoon into the honey and add that to the water. Decide what you are adding as a probiotic. I suggest:

Link

Link
These are the three probiotics and brands that I usually use in yogurt: L reuteri, L Gasseri and Bacillus Coagulens. These are high quality probiotics, but at around $30 a bottle: taking a bunch of different strains, with a family of four, gets really expensive. That's why I recommend growing your own in yogurt or water.
I add a bit of each to the probiotic water. The following are also good strains to use: Lactobacillus rhamnosus,
Saccharomyces boulardii,
Lactobacillus acidophilus, and
Streptococcus thermophilus (This supplement has quite a few of these strains, it's more economical.)

I am using all three probiotics I use in my homemade yogurt. Open any capsules you are using and add the different probiotics, with just enough to have added a total of about half a capsule. If you are using a chewable probiotic you can grind it to powder in a mortar and pestle or cut a bit off and just toss it in with the probiotic powder and let it dissolve. I go ahead and take the remaining tail ends of the pills because: once you open capsules, they start losing their active ingredients.

This will not make a carbonated drink, but you do need to burp the jar occasionally. Since I make homemade wine and mead, I'm familiar with the process. Leave the ring on loosely, and the lid will burp itself.

This is wine that just had the fruit removed and is actively fermenting. It clears, as the yeast eats the sugars, and creates wine. It's actually really good.

You can see through the old blue tequila bottles I used the wine gets more respectable as it ages!

Crazy science experiments? Yes, please! Me and my wine making equipment. I really recommend this kit as an affordable way to start wine making with everything you need in one box: Wine Fermentation Kit you can use old wine bottles or buy a box of them like this: wine bottles I generally just like dry champagne, the drier the better. So when I make wine I want something light and dry, if not carbonated. So: I make a lot of Armenian cucumber and citrus wine. I'll get that recipe up here soon.

If you have never done probiotic water before: you are not making a true alcoholic drink, as there's not enough sugar and you use a yeast with wine not bacteria. However, just as with homemade wine, there will be waste products from your probiotics as they consume the honey. It will be reddish brown, gunk floating at the top of your jar.

If you aren't into eating a bacteria's poop, you can strain it out by pouring your probiotic through a sterilized seive into a second, sterilized jar. I don't really care. I'm trying to stop a sterile gut, so I figure why bother, more yuck = less sterile. So, I usually just leave it in there. It won't hurt you.

You can put your jar in the window (for the warmth) and forget about it (except to burp it) for 3-5 (or more days the longer you leave it the stronger it will taste.) For a way to get probiotics into your kid's diet (sneakily) I would put it on the counter for three or 4 days (make sure it bubbled and then taste it, you'll know if it's just water and honey or if it fermented) and then move it into your refrigerator to keep the taste fresh. It will continue to ferment, just at a slower pace.

Trouble shooting: if your jar develops an unpleasant odor or anything growing in it other than the brown floaties at the top: throw it out. Do not drink it. Next time make sure you start with sterilized equipment (including your hands) and try to use this recipe again.

If nothing happens, no foam at the top, no brown floaties: where you have it may be too cool. You can add another tsp of honey and put it somewhere warmer, like on top of your refrigerator or if you have a two story home: an upstairs bathroom. Heat rises, so sometimes you can fix a temperature issue just by elevating the container you are trying to ferment in. But be careful. If you forget about something and it starts pressurizing you can end up with a big mess if you don't keep it in an area (or container like: in a pan with sides) that's easy to clean.

Here's mine on top of the fridge, next to a tincture jar of chaga mushrooms (in grain alcohol.) I use a lot of home remedies. I also use chaga powder in my coffee daily. Chaga is a great substance for health. Look it up if you are interested.

To continue making your probiotic water without adding more probiotic pills: when you get to the bottom quarter of your jar, fill the jar back up with filtered water and add another tsp of honey. Shake it up and you are good to go.

I hope this gets you interested in starting to replace gut flora that our modern diet and medications may have killed off. I also really recommend trying your hand at other probiotic recipes. Here are a few I like, and they do turn out really tasty:

Meet you out in the garden! Crazy Green Thumbs