Making your own kefir from grains

I'm not going to go into what kefir is or what you do with it right now because I have a feeling just the how-to part is going to get lengthy. I realize that's backwards telling you how to make something when you don't even know how to use it, but I need to get the how-to part up because I sent some grains on a journey and they will be arriving at their new home shortly. If they are going to be happy then their new mama needs to know how to take care of them. {end overly long meaningless paragraph full of run-on sentences}

To start with, you should have the container that you received your grains in with some milk. If you don't know of a friend who can share grains with you, there are places you can get them online. I purchased mine here and would highly recommend them if you can't get free grains from someone.
Also, you'll need a plastic colander and a glass bowl. Never allow your grains to come in contact with metal. Don't ask me why, that's just what they say.


Pour the kefir and grains into the strainer. If you're grossed out by chunky milk, I'm sorry. You're just gonna have to get over it.


Once you've poured it all out and scraped the jar(some of the thicker stuff tends to stick) you're going to need to push the grains around a bit, tap the colander on the bowl, do what you need to do to get all the liquid strained off so only your cauliflower looking "grains" are left. You never want to squish your grains though. Again, I don't know why, that's just what I've read. It traumatizes the poor buggers or something.


Alrighty, now we have a colander full of grains and a bowl full of homemade kefir. The kefir is thickish looking and nothing like the stuff you buy in the store. Or so I've heard. I have not actually ever purchased commercial kefir.


At this point, you can pour your kefir into a clean glass jar, throw that in the frig, and scoop all your grains out of the colander. Remember no metal!


Now, you're going to need to prepare a place for your grains to live. I use a canning jar with a metal ring and a trimmed off coffee filter in place of the sealing disk thingy. This keeps out bugs and things while still allowing necessary air circulation. I only cut a new coffee filter if the old one happens to get some kefir on it or something. Otherwise I don't see the need to waste coffee filters every day. You do what you like.

Oh, I didn't mention it before, but make sure your jar is cooled before you put the grains in there. I wash and reuse the same jar each time so I rinse it in cold water and dry it well. Heat can kill your grains.

The milk to grains ratio is kind of a guessing game. Really, I don't know that it makes a whole lot of difference except that in theory it will take a small number of grains longer to ferment a large quantity of milk. Here, I have a heaping 1/4 C of grains which I'm putting in 2 C of milk. When I first received my grains I had 2T and I used 1 C of milk.

While we're discussing milk, you can make kefir with pretty much whatever milk you want, however, it can't be ultra-pasteurized because they have killed absolutely everything in the milk and your kefir will die. Unfortunately that's about the only organic milk you can buy in the store. Don't even get me started on that. grr... There is one store in my area that sells non-homogonized, VAT pasteurized (lowest legal pasteurization temperature) organic milk from pastured cows. It's SO yummy. :) If you can get raw milk where you live, that would obviously be your first choice.
ETA: Shortly after writing this, we found a source for organic grass-fed raw milk. It's delicious and we'll never go back to store-bought. That said, I have not noticed a difference at all in how my grains are doing with a new kind of milk. I've even had readers say that they do use ultra-pasteurized with success. While I'm not trying to be a doubter, I would be surprised if the grains fare well long term. Whatever works for you though, right? ;)

Okay, so measure and pour your milk into your cooled jar and then add the kefir grains.


The grains will kind of float to the top and look like this:

Now, put your coffee filter lid on and put it on your counter. A few times a day as you walk by, just pick the jar up and swirl it around a wee bit. In the morning or after it's sat for a while you'll notice that it separates, just swirl it back together. Depending on the temperature of your home, your kefir could take as little as 12 hours or as long as 2 days. I've been letting mine sit for 2 days since our house is quite cool in the winter.


Once your whole process is complete you should have one jar of ready to use kefir to put in your frig and one jar of newly fermenting grains on your counter. In my case, my grains had multiplied to the point that I also had one container of newly fermenting grains that I dropped in the mail to send to Jodi. If you do ever mail grains, you need to take into account the gas that they put off and make sure that you smoosh as much air out of the bottle as possible before mailing it or you'll end up with a ginormous explosion.

That's it. It took WAY longer for me to type this up than it takes to care for your kefir every couple of days. I'll come back very soon and share some of the ways that we use kefir in our home.

If you'd like some grains and can promise that you'll take good care of them, let me know and I can give you some. Happy grains multiply at a crazy fast rate.