GoAskAmanda – All About Kefir
Kefir (pronounced kah-FEAR) is a cultured milk beverage with 30 different probiotics that work synergistically to balance the micro flora in the intestines, killing harmful yeasts, molds and bacteria, to give you a healthy colon and immune system. Many people have been healed of conditions such as candida yeast overgrowth, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, bacterial dysbiosis, and anything affecting the digestive system. Kefir has been used for centuries, and is easily made at home with fresh milk and a batch of the culture, called kefir grains, which can be obtained online at kefirlady.com. Marilyn Kefirlady grows her cultures with milk from her own goats, and sells them for 20 dollars a batch, which is a one time purchase. Once you have your grains, you can keep them going forever, and since they multiply with time, you will soon have enough to give to other people if you choose. Marilyn’s website has a lot of information, but I thought I would make my own instructions including all of the little tips that I have learned with experience. So, here goes….
JARS
Obtain a number of quart size jars. Mason (canning) jars are the easiest, during the summer you can get a case of them at Walmart or most grocery stores. I think every kitchen should have Mason jars in different sizes; you can store so many things in them! Mason jars come with two piece metal lids and screw bands, and I recommend also purchasing a set of plastic lids for them. Your fermenting jar must not be airtight, because the fermenting process creates gasses that need to escape. I cover the jar with a square of paper towel and use the screw band to secure it, so the fermenting gasses can pass through the paper towel, yet the contents are still protected from dust, etc. The jar you use to store your finished kefir in the refrigerator can have the solid plastic lid on it. If you cannot find the plastic lids, just place a square of waxed paper underneath the metal lid to protect the kefir from the metal, and screw it on loosely. Kefir is sensitive to reactive metals, but not to stainless steel, as I will mention later. If you do not want to purchase mason jars, any wide mouth quart jar such as from spaghetti sauce will work, and you can use a rubber band to secure the paper towel around the neck of the jar.
MILK
Our kefir experts say that any kind of milk will work, and any level of fat content in the milk will work. However, they say that ultra-pasteurized milk will not culture properly, because it is ultra-dead milk. So, check your brand of milk to make sure it is just pasteurized, and not ultra-pasteurized. I will only use organic milk because I do not want hormones and pesticides included in my healthy drink, and I have had a lot of trouble finding non-ultra-pasteurized organic milk. It seems like the widely available organic brands all do this. I have only been able to find good milk at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods with their store brands. If you can obtain raw grass- fed milk, this is the absolute best! The extra nutrients and enzymes in raw milk make kefir a super food for health and healing.
OTHER EQUIPMENT
You will need a plastic or wooden spoon and a strainer. A stainless steel strainer is alright because it is a non-reactive metal, and a plastic strainer is hard to find. I think it is best to limit the contact of kefir and metal, so I use a wooden spoon.
HOW MUCH TO MAKE
The amount of culture you will receive from Marilyn is 4 tablespoons, enough to make about 2 cups of kefir everyday. Over time, the kefir grains will get bigger, and you have two options. You can make larger quantities of kefir (using a bigger jar) or you can remove some of the grains and do something else with them. If you make larger quantities of kefir you can use it in recipes, but be aware that heating it will destroy the probiotics. If I have extra kefir, I use it in place of milk in muffins or pancakes, and it makes a nice light, fluffy texture. You can’t detect the flavor of kefir in your recipe. I currently do two things with my extra grains, I just chew them up and eat them for the extra probiotics (this is not as gross as it sounds, they taste like sour beer and feel like little chunks of mozzarella cheese) or when I make a smoothie with frozen fruit, kefir, and a little raw honey for sweetening, I whirl in the extra grains. You can’t get too many probiotics, and your health will thank you for it! I try to keep the quantity of kefir I make at the two cup level, because my husband and I each drink a cup a day. If you have more people in your household, you can increase your production in time for as much as you need.
MAKING KEFIR
Finally, we are at the fun part! When you receive your kefir grains, they will be dormant from being out of milk and the stress of going through the mail. It will take about a week before you get a real good batch of kefir, but don’t worry, it will happen. Your initial batches may be too thin, or not have a good flavor. I put mine in a smoothie with frozen fruit, so the flavor is masked.
Put the whole 4 tablespoons of kefir grains in a quart jar. Make a point of visualizing how much space they take up in your jar, so that you can see when they are growing larger and how much you should remove when necessary to keep the quantity of grains consistent. Pour 2 cups of milk (cold, out of the fridge is OK) over them, and swirl the jar gently to make sure the grains are not stuck on the bottom of the jar. I also suggest measuring the milk the first time, and making a visual note of the level of milk in the jar, and on subsequent days you do not have to measure exactly, you can just “eyeball it”. Put your paper towel square and metal screw band on the jar to cover it, and leave it for 24 hours at room temperature. I start mine at night, because I have enough to do in the morning, even though it takes only 5 minutes a day to care for your kefir (yes, I did time it!). The next morning, give your jar another gentle swirl to blend things a bit. You may see layers of whey and the grains will form bulges on the top layer. That evening, after 24 hours have passed, (give or take, you don’t have to be that exact), remove your lid and stir the contents very gently with your wooden spoon. Place your strainer over the mouth of another clean quart jar (I put the strainer in a plastic funnel in the jar, it makes it a lot easier to do this) and pour some of your kefir into the strainer. Stir it gently with the spoon to separate the grains. They look like little pieces of cauliflower. Scoop up the grains, and put them into another clean quart jar. Repeat until all of the kefir is strained into the jar. The grains should never be rinsed or pressed on to extract the kefir, just leave whatever kefir is clinging to them on them for the next batch. Don’t worry about the milk going bad at room temperature—the kefir grains actually destroy any bad bacteria that may form. This is how kefir was invented, as a method of keeping fresh milk from spoiling long before the days of refrigeration.
Put the plastic cap on your finished kefir and store in the refrigerator for use the next day. It will thicken a bit as it chills. Then pour two cups of fresh milk over the grains in your new fermenting jar, swirl, cover, and ferment for 24 hours. You can re-use the paper towel many times, until it becomes dirty. And so it goes, on and on…..The finished kefir will last for weeks at room temperature or months in the refrigerator. The purpose of chilling it is more for flavor and thickness, not to keep it fresh. Your kefir will separate in the fridge, just shake the jar before use. Also, fermented foods do give off a gas, so you may open your fridge one day and hear a little hissing sound. Just loosen the cap of your jar to let the excess gas escape, and then re-tighten it. Don’t worry, the jar will not explode, the hissing sound is the gas escaping, so it cannot build up enough to cause a problem. (This is why homemade kefir is so much better for you than store bought, manufacturers can only put in a very small amount of probiotics, or else their airtight bottles could explode on the store shelves! The plastic cap on a mason jar is not completely airtight, so you are OK.)
You should wash your jars in the dishwasher to sanitize them. I just rinse the strainer, spoon and funnel and air dry. As you can see, you will go through jars pretty quickly, so having several of them handy is good.
With some experimentation, you can adjust the amount of grains and milk to get the results you want. If your kefir is over fermented, meaning there was too little milk for the quantity of grains, it will be too thick to strain, and you can just stir in some fresh milk to thin it enough. Thicker kefir is also pretty sour to taste, if you are going to drink it straight. I don’t care much for the taste, so I stick with my fruit smoothies to mask it.
VACATION TIME
If you need to discontinue kefir production for a while for a vacation or if you are not consuming as much as you are making, you can just put your jar of grains and fresh milk with the paper towel covering in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. They will go dormant in the cold and be alright until you strain the grains out, put in a fresh jar with fresh milk, and start again. Just as when you first started, it will take a week or so of not-so- great kefir making until the cultures wake up and start thriving again, but just give them time. They missed you while you were gone!
IN CLOSING
As you can see, homemade kefir making is an easy, inexpensive way to obtain fresh, quality probiotics that will ensure your good health. This is the beverage that makes those 120 year old Russians! Tests have identified 30 strains of beneficial micro flora found in kefir. This is so impressive; you will not find any purchased supplement that can give you this much variety, in such an absorbable form, all for the cost of a glass of milk. I wish you many decades of good health!
