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Kefir is a thick cheesy dairy beverage similar to buttermilk or yogurt, like kombucha made with milk.
This is the easiest way I know to preserve milk without refrigeration.
Mongolian "airag" may be the same thing.
I learned about kefir from Russians. They say "kee-fear", rolling the 'r' just a bit. Both syllables last a bit longer than you'd like and are accented equally.
Kefir will not "breed true" without a "mother". Also called "kefir grains".
That's a distinct colony which looks (and feels) like a little brain floating in the yogurty stuff.
You save and transfer it from batch to batch, like Kombucha.
The mother grows slowly from batch to batch. Kefir with no mother will not generate one.
The mother contains a diverse population of microbes that get along well. They can out-compete the wild organisms and don't need the milk scalded first.
Whereas yogurt needs to be held at certain heat to yogurtize properly, kefir can be brewed at room temperature or even saddlebag temperature.
One of the nice features of Kefir is that if it separates and settles, leaving clear whey, you can stir it up and it won't separate again. Yogurt by contrast will settle again.
My dad got a mother from Russian friends at his Orthodox church.
He's given me mothers a couple of times. Other Russian friends have given me mothers also.
I can't seem to keep them alive.
So there I was stranded with no starter. So I bought some commercial kefir, innoculated a kombucha mother with it, and have been using that to make "kefir" for a year and a half now.
It's a little bit different from purebred kefir, but the mother is much more durable.
If you have a real Kefir mother and want to know how to "operate" it, skip ahead to step 3.
If you only have dried mother grains, find the activation info elsewhere.
This is the easiest way I know to preserve milk without refrigeration.
Mongolian "airag" may be the same thing.
I learned about kefir from Russians. They say "kee-fear", rolling the 'r' just a bit. Both syllables last a bit longer than you'd like and are accented equally.
Kefir will not "breed true" without a "mother". Also called "kefir grains".
That's a distinct colony which looks (and feels) like a little brain floating in the yogurty stuff.
You save and transfer it from batch to batch, like Kombucha.
The mother grows slowly from batch to batch. Kefir with no mother will not generate one.
The mother contains a diverse population of microbes that get along well. They can out-compete the wild organisms and don't need the milk scalded first.
Whereas yogurt needs to be held at certain heat to yogurtize properly, kefir can be brewed at room temperature or even saddlebag temperature.
One of the nice features of Kefir is that if it separates and settles, leaving clear whey, you can stir it up and it won't separate again. Yogurt by contrast will settle again.
My dad got a mother from Russian friends at his Orthodox church.
He's given me mothers a couple of times. Other Russian friends have given me mothers also.
I can't seem to keep them alive.
So there I was stranded with no starter. So I bought some commercial kefir, innoculated a kombucha mother with it, and have been using that to make "kefir" for a year and a half now.
It's a little bit different from purebred kefir, but the mother is much more durable.
If you have a real Kefir mother and want to know how to "operate" it, skip ahead to step 3.
If you only have dried mother grains, find the activation info elsewhere.
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Signing UpStep 1Get a Chunk of Kombucha Mother
Anyone who brews kombucha will be happy to provide a chunk of "mother".
If you can't find such a person, buy a bottle of commercial kombucha.
Pour it into an open jar and tie a cloth over the top.
If it's still alive you'll see a skin forming on top in a few days.
After a month or two you'll have a nice thick layer of mother in there.
Kombucha gets more and more sour with time. The more sour it gets the better the mother grows.
Here's a nice big chunk from a kit I gave a grad student friend. After graduation the offices were demolished and I found the jar among the rubble with a thriving mother inside.
The other layers in this jar are thinner. Each represents a few weeks' growth.
When I decant and brew again the mother doesn't always float at the surface and a new layer forms atop that.
If you can't find such a person, buy a bottle of commercial kombucha.
Pour it into an open jar and tie a cloth over the top.
If it's still alive you'll see a skin forming on top in a few days.
After a month or two you'll have a nice thick layer of mother in there.
Kombucha gets more and more sour with time. The more sour it gets the better the mother grows.
Here's a nice big chunk from a kit I gave a grad student friend. After graduation the offices were demolished and I found the jar among the rubble with a thriving mother inside.
The other layers in this jar are thinner. Each represents a few weeks' growth.
When I decant and brew again the mother doesn't always float at the surface and a new layer forms atop that.
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an experiment performed over 42 months.
I own three, kombucha, kefir and water kefir milk. I'm no good if no one died, no one is oral because I have to take me wrong though now I am overwhelmed mother of kombucha.
In my glass jar for water kefir (fruit juice, sugar water or other) I equivalent of a mother who grew kombucha. White skin, flaccid, soft, smooth kombucka a mother but in kefir grains of water.
I did not throw, she's alive but I do not know what to do and what to think?
bonjour.
Je possède les trois, kombucha, kéfir d'eau et kéfir de lait. Je ne suis pas doué, si aucun ne meurent, aucun n'est buvable car je dois mal m'y prendre même si maintenant je suis envahie de mère de kombucha.
Dans mon pot en verre pour le kéfir d'eau (jus de fruit, eau sucré ou autre) j'ai l'équivalent d'une mère kombucha qui s'est développée. La peau blanche, flasque, douce, lisse d'une mère kombucka mais dans des grains de kéfir d'eau.
Je ne l'ai pas jeté, elle est vivante mais je ne sais quoi en faire et quoi en penser ?
I called it "Gum-Boo-Cha."
However, both are a complex community of multiple bacterial species and yeasts, supported by some sort of polysaccharide matrix. Inoculating the Kombucha mother in store-bought kefir must have allowed some of the kefi bacteria to colonize and integrate with the better adapted bacteria in the mother - good thinking!
It'd be nice to see if your hybrid mother starts to take on more of the properties of a kefir mother after a few rounds. Alternatively, it may just "collapse" after a while, when the matrix of the mother runs out of some nutrient that the commercial kefir culture doesn't know how to make.
Of course, now I want to know whether you can do this the other way around as well: get some kefir grains, soak them in finished kombucha for a while, and see if you can use them to start a new batch of kombucha.
Hmm... I see on Wikipedia that there is also something called "water kefir", aka tibicos, which grows in sugary liquids. Sounds kinda like making kombucha using kefir grains, except that it seems to ferment much faster.
This is a great piece of applied microbiology - would make for a fun science experiment for schools. Except that you'd probably get sued by ignorant parents the first time little Suzy gets a tummy-ache after drinking a science experiment involving lots of unknown bacteria (and then eating two pounds of chocolate on the way home)...
I put a piece of kombucha into a sterilized clean jar, poured commercial plain kefir over it, covered it with a clean cloth, and enjoyed that kefir as the flavor and odor changed over the next 3 days.
Then I removed the kombucha and 'rested' it in a tub for a day until I got some plain milk.
I put 1/2 gallon of organic milk over the kombucha (was this too much?) and covered it and have left it now for 3 days at room temperature. It has a faint sour odor, but has not clotted as in the pictures, and is not like kefir OR 'sparkly' like kombucha. I'm not sure it has worked at all. How many days should I wait before I decide this is a complete failure and/or unsafe to consume?
How big was your chunk of kombucha mother? The bigger it is the better it is.
Pull it out and look at it. Probably there's some kefir-yogurty stuff gelling up on it.
It takes some time and experimentation to get this stuff the way you want it.
And to answer the last question, yes, I did cover it in cloth, not with a metal lid. I followed the instructions as closely as possible, though I cannot control everything (like, the quality of the kombucha, which was given me by a woman at a health food store from her own private culture).
How many days does it usually take to make this stuff? Does that depend on the quanitity?
Thanks!
The 2nd generation began with 1 quart of milk. It became more sour in 3 days than the other was in 6 days. It also is more "sparkly".
I do not notice any change to the Kombucha mother. Shouldn't it be growing a new layer?
http://www.cracked.com/article_17174_p2.html
http://users.chariot.net.au/%7Edna/kefirpage.html - real thorough and in-depth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir - great overview
http://www.torontoadvisors.com/Kefir/kefir-list.php - where to get kefir grains if you want to start your own.