Easy Homemade Milk Kefir

Homemade milk kefir is made from kefir grains, which are a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. It traditionally used as a drink, but it’s also great for smoothies or as a buttermilk substitute. It can even thicken so that you use it like yogurt.

Homemade kefir is not the same as store bought kefir. Store bought kefir is really just yogurt in a liquid form. Homemade kefir tends to have a stronger flavour and can even be sparkling when fresh.

Why make milk kefir

Milk kefir is the perfect dairy culture for home use.

1. It is much easier to maintain then yogurt.
2. It ferments at room temperature, and you don’t need to preheat the milk before culturing.
3. Milk kefir is a great replacement for buttermilk in baking.
4. You can culture whipping cream.
5. You can make kefir cheese.
6. Kefir can be used as a starter culture (either as whey or straight kefir) for most everything.

The most difficult part of making kefir is finding the kefir grains. Most health food stores carry a powdered “kefir” starter which isn’t actually real kefir, it’s just some of the bacteria strains found in kefir, and may not be robust enough to culture over and over again. If you want to maintain your own colony of kefir grains then you need to either buy freeze dried grains or make friends with someone who has grains.

Here’s a picture of my kefir grains. When I was a Tracebridge, Katie’s grains were very different from mine… more like water kefir grains. So clearly there are a few strains out there!

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Like all living beings, kefir does require a bit of TLC.  Here’s how to care for your new “pet”:

1. Kefir is happiest in fresh milk at room temperature. Try to pace your culturing with your consumption so that you can keep your kefir out of the fridge. If you only use a little bit of kefir, then just culture 2 cups with 1 tbsp of grains.
2. Alternatively, you can store your kefir in the fridge with lots of milk for 1-3 weeks. I’ve even left it for up to 4 weeks while we were on vacation. It wasn’t happy. But a few batches of milk later we were back in business.
3. Happy kefir will keep multiplying, so you’ll quickly end up with more grains then you’ll need.  Though the grains are edible, I would recommend passing them along to a friend instead (or otherwise disposing of them).
4. If your grains turn a funny colour, then it’s likely that they’ve picked up some invasive mold/bacteria. Unfortunately the best way to fix this is to throw them out and start anew. (I’ve had my grains go pink on me. Luckily I have shared with a lot of friends so I can borrow back more kefir grains!)
5. Kefir can cross contaminate with other cultures (yogurt, sourdough, etc) so it’s best to culture them in a separate rooms of your house. I do all my kefir culturing in the kitchen, sourdough in the living room, yogurt in the dining room (I’ve had kefir grow in my yogurt before) and other ferments in the bedrooms.

Weird, Wonderful and Completely Untrue Kefir Tales

There are a lot of stories going around about how to care for your kefir, that are just not true.  I’ve had the same culture kicking along for the past 5 years or so… so I’m pretty sure I know my stuff:

1. You don’t need to wash your grains. They just need fresh milk to keep them healthy and strong.  Water is unnecessary and probably harmful considering the potential risks of chlorine for our little friends.
2. You can use metal utensils… unless you use really old-school copper or iron utensils… then the latic acid of the milk might damage your utensils. Otherwise stainless steel is fine.