Did I kill my water kefir grains??

[Sieren]

I got some dehydrated water kefir grains from Culturesforhealth.com, and I rehydrated them in regular tap water that I boiled and cooled to get rid of chlorine (I didn't have any filtered water on hand), along with sugar per the directions. I thought that boiling the water would get rid of enough of the bad stuff? Maybe not...
Well, my first batch of water kefir, I mixed up boiled and cooled water and sugar in the right amounts and dumped in my rehydrated kefir grains...and 24 hours (and also 48 hours) later nohting happened. It tasted and smelled funny, and very flat, kind of slightly sweet. And no bubbles either. So I paniced and dumped them into some coconut water, but then I later read that only milk kefir grains should be used in coconut water!! :
(btw, nothing happend with the coconut water either)
So are they dead? Should I even bother putting them in filtered sugar water now, or just get new ones and start over?
*sigh*

[dogmom327]

They're likely okay. Just rinse them off and put them in sugar water. It can take a couple of batches for you to see bubbles (and often for awhile, they are so small and infrequent, they won't be obvious). The ultimate test is if the kefir (after 48 hours) is less sweet than the sugar water you started with. There will still be some sweetness because some fructose remains in the finished kefir.

You can use water kefir grains with coconut water but people have mixed results. For coconut milk though, I would use milk kefir grains.

[Sieren]

ooo, cool! Thanks!!
So how do you get it to become fizzy? Does that happen after you bottle it?

[dogmom327]

A second fermentation with juice (after the kefir grains are removed can help) but really sugar matters. Sugars with molasses (rapadura, sucanat, etc.) produce much more fizz than white sugar (but also have a stronger taste). Putting your kefir grains in apple or grape juice also produces a fizzy drink but it really hard on the grains. If you want to go this route, I'd suggest giving your grains some time to multiply (this will generally happen faster if you are brewing them in a sugar that contains molasses) and then split them so you have sugar-water grains and juice grains.