On 26 July, 2008, I purchased an item entitled "*KEFIR GRAINS Live & Organic* *RAW MILK* Probiotic" from an ebay seller called brinick12 for $5.50. On the morning of August 2nd, the mailman dropped off a box the content of which was a zip-lock bag containing several small white blobs floating in water.
I placed the blobs at the bottom of a glass jar, filled the jar half-way with organic reduced fat milk, covered with a paper towel, tied the paper towel to the mouth of the jar with a rubber band, and let sit for a day.
Overnight, the white blobs did their work. They are active kefir cultures - "grains" which thrive in the milky environment, out-competing their harmful bacteria brethren. They are both nutritious and preservative. During the night these little critters had caused a separation of the milk into curds and yellowish whey.
This morning, I strained the resultant brew in order to separate the original blobs back out from the liquid. The blobs I placed back into the glass jar along with more organic reduced fat milk - ingredients for tomorrow's brew. The separated liquid I stirred, and poured into a plastic container, covered with a lid, and let sit on the counter top. It is kefir that can either be drunk immediately or left covered to ripen further.
I am drinking some right now - it's delectable - slightly more effervescent and "yeasty" than store-bought kefir. In other words, it's better.
5 comments:
Oh man! I want to taste. I'll trade you your voter registration letter for a small glass of the tangy nectar...
so, is it the whey that you drink? or do you discard some part of the mixture?
I'll bring some with me to Mystic Pointe this weekend.
You drink both whey and curd, as you do in regular milk and yogurt. This requires some shaking or stirring in order to counteract the separation that has occurred during fermentation.
Nothing is discarded. The grains are reusable. Simply take them out of the completed brew and put them into a new jar of milk, and Bob's your uncle.
I suspect that my kefir is slightly alcoholic. I will test the specific gravity of the next batch in order to determine alcohol content, although I'm not sure if this is an accurate method for kefir.
you guys are crazy
Update: I think I ate the grains.
While straining the second batch, the curd was not fitting through the strainer mesh, so I forced it through with a wooden spoon. I left the bottom chunks of the kefir unstrained out of fear of ruining the grains with my brutal straining technique.
After washing off the bottom chunks to inspect them, I became convinced that they were not grains, but merely clumps of curd. Regardless, I placed them in a jar of milk in the fridge hoping that they would prove themselves to be grains by fermenting the milk.
A few days later, the milk was still not fermented, so I ate them. As my teeth were masticating them, I realized that they were solid gelatinous blobs that were not readily broken up. Most likely they were in fact the grains.
Time to find a new source of grains.
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