About twenty years ago a homeschool acquaintance gave me some kefir grains. She said “Just put them in milk and the next day they’ll be kefir!” So I went home, put them in my non-organic 2% milk and spent the next few months drinking stinky cheese water. It was barely drinkable if you held your nose. It took a lot of trial and error, not to mention wasted milk, to arrive at the conclusion that my ratio of grains to milk was off and the grains really didn’t like that milk. But I kept trying, because even though my kefir wasn’t just right, I was still reaping its benefits from day one, and there is no teacher like time and experience.
Good kefir, I would eventually come to understand, should taste like sweet milk with a slight tang. It should be thick and creamy and silky on the tongue. It should make you feel alive. Because Kefir is alive. Those magical little grains turn fresh, perishable milk into a shelf-stable elixir of health. In the Caucus Mountains and parts of Russia, the family grains were for millennia considered sacred, and were passed down from one family to the next as part of a woman’s dowry.
It wasn’t until I took my grains on a 4-day road trip to Wyoming in the 2019 Thanksgiving-weekend blizzard, that I discovered Kefir grains thrive in the cold, higher elevations which are closer to their native biome. Those grains got so fat on that trip, by the time I got home they looked like tiny cauliflowers. So now, if my grains seem tired I will freeze them in a small baggy of kefir for a week or more. And when I separate my grains I freeze the babies so I always have spare grains to share. This is also a great way to prep grains for mailing.
Going on vacation? Take it with you! If you are flying you can grab a bag of kefir babies from your freezer, double wrap it in plastic wrap, put that in another zipper baggy, and tuck it into your suitcase. When you arrive at your destination, pick up a pint or a quart of milk and drop your grains into it. The next day you will have fresh kefir! Nothing like living Kefir to correct health issues associated with travel.
Traveling by car? Want kefir ready when you’re there? You can temporarily put a sealed lid on your kefir jar and keep it in a cup holder. Just loosen and re-tighten the lid every now and then so the kefir can breathe. I have found the grains enjoy this gentle jostling and will occasionally give my kefir jar a little jiggle or a gentle spin as I walk by.
This is also how I check on its progress. The milk should just barely jiggle when the kefir is ready, and it will be just slightly beginning to pull away from the bottom of the jar. When it looks like this, it is ready to be strained. If you aren’t ready, just pop it in the fridge as-is.
Fresh kefir with the grains in will keep perfectly for days, although it will continue to ferment and get slightly more sour each day. I have occasionally kept mine for weeks at this stage, if I’ve been too lazy or busy or ill to deal with it. Whether you drink it at an advanced stage of fermentation is up to you. Let your nose, your gut and your common sense be your guide.
Either way, the grains can simply be strained out and popped into a fresh jar of milk. If It is very far gone and you feel the need to rinse the grains, do so only with purified water or fresh milk. You don’t want the grains coming in contact with chlorine or fluoride.
Kefir likes the same temperatures you do. Let it ferment on your kitchen counter away from direct sunlight. As you develop a relationship with your grains you will notice they eat faster at high temperatures and slower at low temperatures. Try a few different places in your kitchen and see which one your grains prefer.
The site I link to below sells dehydrated kefir grains. I have not ordered from them and can make no claims as to the quality of their grains, but I do want to share their blog because they have some beautiful, well written information about the history and benefits of kefir. So check them out, find some grains on Facebook marketplace, Etsy, or an online store, start making kefir and let me know how it goes.
To your health,
Georgiana Leighanne