I still periodically do some home fermentation; I have my trusty old kombucha SCOBY going, and was given some milk kefir grains a year or two ago as well. When we had our raw milk share, I made milk kefir regularly for smoothies, but since I am keto-adapted and Jeremy finds drinking cow’s milk to aggravate his sinus issues, we ended up putting a hold on the cow share. Now I just purchase a bit of milk for kefir every few weeks to keep the grains healthy; most of it goes to our sweet old dog, who loves the taste and benefits greatly from the probiotics in managing her long-term yeast issues.I used to eat a lot of Greek yogurt, and it is one of the few foods I sometimes crave on keto, especially given the probiotic benefit. Every once in a while, I pick up a container of GT’s unflavored cocoyo, made with young coconut meat. It is sour and slightly fizzy, lovely with a few drops of stevia stirred in, and far too expensive to make a regular habit of eating. That is when I remembered hearing that it is possible to use milk kefir grains to ferment coconut milk so long as you refresh the grains with regular cow’s milk every few batches. Since I still had active grains, I decided to give it a shot with a can of organic coconut milk.
Lo and behold, even in the cool winter-time temperatures in my house, in less than 24 hours I ended up with a jarful of perfectly fermented thick and tangy coconut milk kefir. To my very pleasant surprise, it is remarkably similar in taste and texture to the cocoyo after refrigerating, and has completely resolved my yogurt cravings. Now that Jeremy is trying keto, I am hoping that he will sample this coconut kefir as well; he stopped eating yogurt and milk kefir when he figured out that dairy is problematic for him, but he could also benefit tremendously from the super-probiotic powers of kefir.