Kefir questions

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Kefir questions

Postby randicoot on Sun Oct 30, 2016 11:04 am

I'm fairly new to kefir making--just started last spring. Got the grains from a coworker of my wife's. That was an experience. We were there about 15 minutes--they were chatting--but immediately on entering I noticed their house smelled really strongly of sour milk/stale fridge. When I got the grains home sure enough they also stunk. I rinsed them off with tap water (well--no chlorine) and have been making kefir just fine since.

The thing is they don't seem to be multiplying. Is that to be expected with regular pasteurized milk? They have changed a bit over the summer--seems like the grains are smaller but the volume is about the same. I did try some raw milk recently and they're supposed to like that, right. They might have increased in bulk a little but I notice that around the grains is a lot more stringy/gloopy. Is that the kefirin? Around the same time I also switched to a finer sieve instead of a colander (both plastic). Do the grains grow attached to the rest of the colony or do they start as small individual grains?

I'll probably try the raw milk again but make sure that we'll use it quicker--it spoiled before we could use it all. Which brings up another question. Will the kefir grains reverse a milk just starting to spoil? Also with the raw milk, do you shake it up to somewhat homogenize it or do you skim off some of the fat? It seems like when there's more fat a lot of it sticks to the inside of the jar and needs a stiff brush to clean off.

Thanks for any input and sorry for the long post.
Randy
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Re: Kefir questions

Postby randicoot on Sun Nov 06, 2016 9:28 am

I found a lot of answers at yemoos.com. I had read a lot of it before but had forgot about it. My grains are probably doing ok. The stringiness is most likely the kefirin. It has made for a thicker and creamier finished kefir and after it is stirred it doesn't separate much in the fridge. Milk that has started to spoil usually doesn't do well for kefir.

The grains I got were fairly large compared to how they are now and apparently smaller is better. I seem to recall reading there that larger grains can signal in imbalance but I can't find that again.

Ever since the raw milk my gut has been a bit more gurgly. Maybe that introduced different strains of bacteria that I'm still adapting to.

Randy
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Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2016 1:44 pm


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