Beginners Guide to Making Milk Kefir

So, I'm also doing milk kefir, as well as water kefir and kombucha.  To make sure they don't contaminate each other, I keep them in different corners of the kitchen and carefully clean the items that touch them.  Milk kefir fermented for about 12 hours tastes like liquid yoghurt; if longer, it separates into curds and whey and  you can create a thicker yoghurt or cream cheese.

Milk kefir that has separated into grains and curds on top and whey at the bottom.

 Milk Kefir Recipe

1 cup of milk
1 tbsp of milk kefir grains



 

To make milk kefir, simply put the grains in a sealed jar with the milk and leave at room temperature for a half a day.  After a few hours, the milk will separate into curds and whey but the bottom will still look like milk.  Shake the jar until it's mixed again, then leave it to sit again.  After a couple of hours, the milk will have separated a second time and now it's ready.  

Grains left in the sieve that are covered in curds.

Pour the contents of the jar through a sieve to collect the kefir grains to reuse.  The curds will stick to the grains, so shake vigorously to get most of them off.

Put the grains in fresh milk to start a new batch.

At this point, the milk kefir is a liquid yoghurt .  If you filter it through a cheese cloth or coffee filter to drain the whey, you can easily make it into a spreadable cream cheese or a thicker yoghurt. 

After rinsing the curds off in milk, the milk kefir grains resemble cauliflower florets.

When I first got the milk kefir grains, I had some 1% organic milk in my fridge.  When I put the grains into this milk, half of the milk would turn into whey.  Now I'm using 3.25% and this turns into about 1/4 whey.

If you're eating the milk kefir yoghurt, it's a good idea to remove the whey.   The whey has a bitter bite to it.  You don't have to throw it away, it has a lot of uses in cooking.  To separate the whey, simply pour out the contents of the jar into a sieve; the curds cling to the grains in the sieve while the whey goes to through.  Pour this out and save.  Next shake the curds loose from the grains and you have your yoghurt at the bottom.  Otherwise, if you leave the curds and whey in the fridge, the whey will separate to the top and with the curds on the bottom.  Simply pour out the whey before eating the rest.

The grains will multiply quickly.  When I start with 1 tbsp of grains, I usually have another 1/2-1 tbsp by the end of one week.

To store extra grains, place them in the fridge with milk (1 cup of milk for 1 tbsp).  The milk will have to be changed weekly.  Dehydrating  the grains is also a possibility.