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Comment by anotherevan | Hacker News Reader

I've recently starting trying my hand at brewing kombucha after trying some. The first batch was terrible, left it too long in the first fermentation stage. Will be bottling the next batch for secondary fermentation today, so hoping it will come out betterer.

I'm wondering if water kefir might be easier and how it compares to drink.

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Milk-based kefir (I have no experience with water-based kefir cultures, but imagine they'd be similar) is fun to make. The grains are easy to handle. It's similar to kombucha in difficulty, but grows faster, and you make smaller batches generally. Like kombucha, it can get quite sour if you leave it too long. I stopped drinking milk so I no longer make it, but remember enjoying the process. I have a Flickr album showing the process here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidniergarth/albums/72157604...

I don't think water kefir is similar to kombucha in difficulty, kombucha seems much more fragile. I killed my kombucha mother at the first batch (not sure what went wrong), and never got any problem with water kefir. A friend who tried both reports the same experience.

I've done both. I found kombucha really easy to maintain. My biggest problem was getting over-ambitious and moving from a one-gallon glass container to a two-gallon container. The larger container made too much and got to be a hassle to process; it got to be a burden. I wish I had kept that smaller container.

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