I've been making fruit kefir (or tibicos), using only some sugar and a lemon for 1L of tap water (boiled to remove chlorine and sterilize my bottle, and of course left to cool down before adding the kefir grains).
After some 24 hours I've noticed a thin film of white mold forming on the surface of the water and on the slices of lemon. The mold looks a lot like some starting colony of penicillium digitatum and/or penicillium italicum (I was not thinking about making a post about this, sorry for the absence of picture!), which are common attacker of citrus fruits, and as far as I guess are rather harmless.
After about 36h of fermentation I've transfered the drink (+some mold!) into new bottles and put the ferments (+some mold!) back into a clean container. Neither of them smelled like rotten fruits, otherwise I would've thrown them both away. I've also added the juice of the lemon to decrease the pH and hopefully prevent the mold from growing again.
Is the filtered drink (which I'm going to let sit in the fridge for a couple more days) safe to drink if no more mold develops? Such small amount of a common mold seems unlikely to cause anything serious, but I'd rather avoid food poisining if there's a chance for it.
Can the kefir grains safely be used for future batches?
Thanks in advance!
