Nancy, I find the dairy kefir does just as well in coconut water, and I don't add any sugar to it. I actually bought some coconut water once without realizing that it had a little sugar in it. When I came to drink my kefir the drink was alcoholic! So no added sugar works best with dairy kefir :-) I just add my dairy grains into the coconut water and then put them back in the milk once that batch is done. It is fine as long as they go back into milk again at some point.

I use raw jersey cow milk, which is A2 so a huge improvement over the normal pasteurised holstein milk. I don't use goat only because I don't have access to a raw source of it and I decided that raw cow would be better than cooked goat. If I had a choice I would go raw goat.

I had about 500ml of kefir today (2 cups) and had no bloating whatsoever, whereas yesterday I had a small handful of sultanas and it messed up my body all day long with gas and intestinal churning and general intestinal distress. It is clear to me from experimenting on myself that (for me personally) kefir is a good guy. Good to be able to have a few foods to eat other than just meat and fat and lettuce.