Kefir from Grains update

I contacted the person who sold me my kefir grains. She has been very helpful. She suggested that the grains need to start reproducing before my kefir will be satisfactory. In the meantime, I was on vacation for a week, so I needed to put my grains on vacation hold. I'm told that I should add them to a cup of milk and put them in a jar in the fridge.

OK, that's done, and I'm back from vacation. I strained my grains from the vacation jar and they look like this:

I'm told that I can drink what is left if it tastes and smells OK. I'm giving that criterion a no vote. I saved it for cooking, though. I've been using the unsatisfactory results as a substitute for milk in my sourdough bread, and to make waffles.

I made a batch of kefir with those grains and a cup of milk. After 24 hours, I strained the grains and set the kefir back on the shelf for a second ferment, but with no added flavors. The grains now look like this:

They do seem to be growing a bit. The resulting double-fermented kefir was very sour--almost undrinkable, but I added two teaspoons of honey and a little vanilla extract. I drank it, and didn't puke, but it is not something I'm looking forward to consuming, again.

For the next batch, I chose to follow the procedure recommended by my grain vendor. She adds the grains to milk (in larger quantities), sets it on the shelf for 24 hours, stirs it, recaps it and puts it in the refrigerator for another 12 hours. The refrigerator cycle is with a tight lid and the grains are still in it. After these 12 hours, she strains the grains and drinks the result with a 50-50 mix of orange juice.

My grains after this cycle look like this:

So, they do seem to be growing. The kefir/orange juice mix was quite drinkable, but I'm still not crazy about it. My kefir is starting to come out thicker. Maybe I'm getting there, but I'm still considering the $5/quart store-bought kefir as a backup plan.

I'm not giving up, yet. I've got another batch in the cellar, now.

Kefir Double Ferment

I'm still having some trouble with the taste of my kefir. It has been suggested that it might just take a few cycles for my grains to start reproducing before my kefir thickens properly.

Crohn's Babe's How to Make Kefir 101 video suggested that the double fermentation made a "potent and very sour kefir." That was hardly what I was after. My kefir is plenty sour already.

On the other hand, Cultures for Health has a video that describes double fermentation as a way to add flavor to your kefir while making it less sour.

Well, it can't make it more sour and less sour. I guess I should find out for myself. The Cultures for Health video suggested adding orange or lemon peel, cinnamon sticks, tea bags, or vanilla beans. I didn't have any of those, so I decided to add a few coffee beans.

The result was significantly less sour, and it took on the flavor from the coffee beans. My kefir is still a little lumpy, but this was a big improvement. I might try cinnamon sticks, next.

Pickles

I like pickles. Making my own fermented pickles is something I have been looking forward to, but online advice suggested that I do not start with that. So, I've made carrots, sauerkraut, and kefir. I'm ready for the pickles. I chose the recipe that came with my fermentation kit.

There were numerous issues. Let's start with the cucumbers. The recipe asks for 1 pound of kirby cucumbers--the smallest ones I can get and all the same size. Well, I found them at the grocery store, and they were all the same size, but that size was HUGE. There were four big fat cukes in a one-pound package. I was not looking to make a meal out of one pickle, so I opted for these One Sweet Cucumber snacking seedless cucumbers. They are all about the same size and I am confident that I can fit more than one in a one-pint mason jar.

The recipe called for a grape leaf. I don't even know where to look for one of those. It says I can substitute a second bay leaf. Okay. Maybe I should have just used one bay leaf in the first place. I am adapting a 1 quart recipe for a 1 pint jar. Oh well, too late for that, now.

The recipe calls for 1 dill flower or 2 tablespoons of dill seeds. I have dried dill weed. It will have to do.

The recipe also calls for 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, but never tells you to do anything with it. I just put a couple dashes of pepper into the jar.

Garlic cloves. Hey, I've got those. The instructions say to put all of these items in the jar while the cucumbers soak in ice water. As with the dilly sticks, the garlic cloves get in the way of the packing. I think I'll put them in after the cucumbers, next time.

Now, I understand the difficulty with making pickles. The cucumbers need to be packed whole while still leaving some head room in the jar. Mine were a little too long. Once I packed the pickles, the Pickle Pebble (fermentation weight) protruded above the rim of the jar. Try saying that fast, "Once I packed the pickles, the Pickle Pebble peeked past the perimeter."

I squished them down as well as I could without bruising them.

Now, the instructions tell me to pour the brine over the cucumbers after I have placed the fermentation weight. That seemed an unnecessary difficulty. I did it in the other order. It's a pretty tight fit, vertically. The instructions wanted the weight and the cucumbers to be covered with brine, but there is no room for gas at the top of the jar that way. I poured out some of the liquid after I put the Pickle Pebble in place.

Unlike the sauerkraut, the pickles are expected to shrink and sink lower as the fermentation proceeds. I hope that is true. I don't want to have liquid spilling out of the top of the Pickle Pipe.

Fermentation is expected to take 2-4 weeks. I'm supposed to wait an additional week after the fermentation stops before sampling.

Taste Test

I tasted these pickles after 3 weeks. The brine had gotten cloudy as expected. They seemed ready. The pickles taste good enough, but the process has made the pickles a little limp and it is as if their insides have been sucked out. That might be because of the type of cucumbers I used. They still have a crisp outside, but I prefer store-bought Claussen pickles to these.

Getting the right kind of cucumbers is a big challenge for a pint-sized jar. They need to be small and all the same size. I might try this again, when fresher pickling cucumbers are available. I might need to get some quart jars for this to work well.

Kefir from grains

Having had some success with making kefir (or maybe yogurt) from store-bought kefir, (See my blog post about that process) I decided to try making it from grains. I found the grains on etsy.com. There were many sellers to choose from. One of the sources was a farm (I think it's a farm) in the state where I live. I figured that minimizing the travel was a good idea. I ordered my grains, and they arrived in a couple of days in a small jar with some milk.

I followed the procedure from this video

How To Make Milk Kefir 101

My product did not thicken up like pudding as the video suggested, but it looked much like her product. The result was so sour it was undrinkable! 😜 It was much improved with a teaspoon of honey. Still, it wasn't as good as the store-bought beverage or the kefir that I made from the store-bought beverage.

I do seem to get more grains out than I started with. That suggests that something right is happening.

The vendor who sold me the grains suggested that it might take several cycles before the result is satisfactory. I've heard that from other sources, too. I'm still working on that.

A video from Cultures for Health suggested that my result might be due to a cooler fermentation location, and it might take longer than 24 hours. I culture my kefir in the storage room where our heater is. It's the warmest place in the house. It's in the mid 70s Fahrenheit in there.

My grain source suggested that if the kefir is too thin, I should try adding less milk. I've been using about a tablespoon of grains and one cup of milk. Cultures for Health suggests that one teaspoon is enough for up to 4 cups of milk. This is going to take some experimentation.

I have used my kefir in cooking with good results. I substitute it for the milk in my sourdough bread.

For drinking, though, I think I need to go back to the Google search to see how I know if I made kefir or just sour milk. 🙂

Maybe paying five bucks a quart for something that tastes good isn't so bad. I'm not giving up, yet, though.

Sauerkraut

For my second food ferment, I am trying to make red sauerkraut. This is the first recipe in the book that came with the fermentation kit. The book is also available online. I chose red cabbage, because I find it has more flavor than green cabbage.

As with the Dilly Sticks, the recipe is for a quart mason jar, and I am using pint jars. The first ingredient is one small red or green cabbage (about 2 pounds). I can't buy half a head of cabbage, but had some other ideas to cook the leftovers. I quartered and shredded half of the cabbage after saving one leaf that is used as a top layer later on.

I'm next instructed to add the cabbage to a large bowl in layers with salt in between. The bowl I used is about 9 inches in diameter and about 2-3 inches deep. Keep in mind that this is just one half of a cabbage. Working with the whole thing would, indeed, take a "large bowl."

Next, we massage and squeeze the cabbage by hand and then pound it flat with the Pickle Packer (included in the fermentation kit from Masontops.) Well, a round-bottomed bowl is not the right vessel for this step. The cabbage keeps spilling out the sides of the bowl, and there is not a lot of flat surface on the bottom to pound it flat against.

I switched to a casserole dish with much better results.

Now, it's time to pack the jar. I'm instructed to fill and pack the jar until it reaches the shoulder of the jar. The pint jars, don't really have a shoulder. I can sort of estimate where that would be compared to a picture of a quart jar in the guide book.

To my surprise, the half a cabbage doesn't come close to filling a one pint jar. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. The recipe suggested that a 2 pound cabbage almost exactly fills a quart jar. My cabbage weighed in at 26 ounces. Maybe in the future I will weigh out 1 pound of cabbage to work with.

I shredded, pounded, and packed another quarter of the cabbage and had a little left over.

Next, I'm told to take the cabbage leaf that I saved from the first step, set it on the cutting board and, "Set the jar on the leaf, near the top where it is more pliable." The jar is pliable? If you were an English major in college, please leave a comment. This sentence had me confused, at first.

The idea is to cut a circle from the cabbage leaf that matches the inside diameter of the jar. It seems to me that using the mason jar ring is an easier method. That's what I did.

 Now, we put a Pickle Pebble weight on top of the cabbage leaf, and a Pickle Pipe for ventilation and set it on a shelf to ferment. It is supposed to be ready in 2-3 weeks, or maybe a month or more, depending on the ambient temperature.

I'm supposed to wait a day or two to check the progress. If the cabbage and Pickle Pebble is not submerged in liquid after a couple of days, I'm supposed to add some brine. I found that my liquid level was all the way up to the surface of the Pickle Pipe. Maybe I overfilled the jar to start with. I poured off a tablespoon or so of the liquid and put the Pickle Pipe and ring back on.

Everything seems to be off to a good start. We'll check back around the end of January. Cue Tom Petty, "The Waiting is the Hardest Part."

Update: Another day later, and the Pickle Pipe is bulging upward. That's a good sign that fermentation is happening, but some of the purple brine is leaking out, too. I poured off another 1/2 inch or so of the brine to give it some head room. I definitely over filled the jar to start.

Update: 

The harvest was successful. I tried the kraut after about 3 weeks.  It has the pleasant sour flavor that I would expect. It is a little dry. There is hardly any juice in the jar. It's still slightly moist after digging through the top half inch, but there is no fluid that could be poured off. Next time I will need to use a little less cabbage.

I've been eating it raw. Cooking will kill off the beneficial bacteria that I have been trying to cultivate.  I might try cooking with it eventually, but for now it is just an attractive side dish to a meal.

Second Batch:

For my second batch, I planned from the start to use 3/4 of a red cabbage. The whole cabbage weighed about 1-1/4 pounds. My three quarters weighed a little less than one pound. It fit perfectly into a pint jar. After packing, the liquid came up to the 10 ounce mark on the jar.

With the Pickle Pebble in place, there is still some head room.

I'll check in a couple of days to see if it is overflowing like it did before. A more precise fill mark should help with future batches.

Update: After three days, there was some overflow, so the 10 ounce marks is a little too high. The Pickle Pebble was all the way to the top of the jar. Last time, I  poured off some of the liquid, and the sauerkraut came out rather dry. This time, I took out a pinch of the kraut (about 1 tablespoon) and ate it. It's not too bad after just 3 days. I don't think I'm going to wait a month to harvest this batch. Advice I've read suggests that I should taste it to decide when it is done. 

I added some dill and caraway seeds to this batch to enhance the flavor. Those spices were suggested by the recipe. I didn't measure the amount, but estimated it at about 1/2 teaspoon of each. I also didn't measure the salt. The recipe calls for 1/2 tablespoon for a one-pint batch. I used two generous pinches after each quarter cabbage.

Solid Food - Carrots

The kefir was a start, but I was very interested in fermenting solid food. I bought this wonderful kit from Masontops

OK, technically, I bought it from Bed Bath & Beyond using one of my extensive collection of 20% off coupons. The kit has these very simple "pickle pipes" for venting the carbon dioxide from the fermentation process without letting air back in. Everyone who had reviewed them online seemed to love them.

I chose the Fermented Dilly Sticks recipe from the Masontops web site for my first attempt. For one, Masontops suggested it as a good starting recipe. Second, the product can be sampled after one week. Many of the recipes take several weeks to complete. As a new project, I am naturally eager to test my results. It turns out that Mastontops got the recipe from Cultures for Health, so I'd better give them credit. I kind of wish I had read the Cultures for Health description when I was making my batch. Their explanation of how to put the garlic in makes more sense.

Given my supplies, I needed to modify the recipe a bit. The recipe uses 1 quart mason jars, and I bought 1 pint jars. I don't want to over commit to something that I might not like. That change was easy enough. Just divide everything in half. I thought about using some pre-packaged, ready-to-eat baby carrots, but decided to stay closer to the instructions to increase my chances of success.

I bought whole carrots and sliced them in quarters, sort of. I needed to leave 1-2 inches of space in the jar, so I got out a ruler and measured from the counter top to the top of the jar. I needed 3 inch long sticks. I cut one and used that as a guide for the other cuts. The fat half of the carrot could be cut into 4 sticks, but the narrow end was too skinny for that. I cut those in half.

Dividing the recipe in half works fine except for things like 3 cloves of garlic. I rounded up to 2. Then, there was the 3 small sprigs of dill. My dill is already dried and crumbled. Well, you can search for the answer to just about any question online these days. "How many teaspoons in a sprig of dill?" comes up with the answer of about 1/2 teaspoon. I used a heaping 1/2 teaspoon.

Now, the recipe calls for 4 cups of filtered water and 3 tablespoons of sea salt. No problem with dividing that in two, but I didn't want to bother with the filtering. Some guides suggest that chlorine will disturb the fermentation process. I looked up the water report for my local utility, and they say there is less than 1 part per million of chlorine. I'm satisfied with that.

For the sea salt, I am using kosher salt. I already had some. It doesn't contain iodine or any anti-caking additives, so I think that is going to be a satisfactory choice.

2 cups of water was far more than I needed. I still had a cup left over. Maybe I'll try 1-1/3 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of salt, next time.

OK, here is my result.

It's been sitting on the counter for a couple of days, and I see some bubbles rising up from the bottom, so I think the fermentation has begun. The recipe suggests trying them after a week if you like them crisp. Sounds good to me. Watch for an update on Thursday or Friday.

Update: I tried one after 7 days. It tasted pretty good, but still quite salty. I'm going to leave the rest to ferment for another week. There are bubbles coming up from the bottom of the jar, so there is some fermentation going on.

Second update: After 16 days, I took off the Pickle Pipe and fermentation weight. I'm considering this batch to be done. They mostly taste like salty wet, but still crispy carrots. I'm not sure that there was that much fermentation. I might try this recipe, again, but I'm not that impressed with the first try.

Homemade Kefir

My first attempt at fermenting foods at home was to make my own kefir. For starters, store-bought kefir is about 5 or 6 bucks a quart. Second, I wanted to control what went into the kefir.

Normally, kefir is made from "grains." These grains are not like the grains that we make bread out of. They are sort of rubbery or spongy cultures of bacteria.

By A. Kniesel - Fotografiert von A. Kniesel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

I was wondering if I could make kefir by using a little bit of the store-bought kefir that I had in the fridge. After all, that is how I use my sourdough starter. I found this video online.



I didn't heat my milk when I tried it, and I didn't make a whole gallon of it. I used 1 tablespoon of kefir and one cup of milk. I mixed them in a mason jar, and put it in the warmest room of the house.

Now, setting a cup of milk out on a shelf for a day or two, and drinking the result seemed a bit counter intuitive. I wondered how I would know if I made kefir or just sour milk. These days, you can ask just about any question on Google, and you will find someone who has asked the same question. Well, anyway, after a couple of days, I had something that had thickened up and sort of smelled like the store-bought kefir. I put it in the fridge and took it out the next day for a taste. I decided to toss some pomegranate seeds into it and made a nice photogenic snack.

It tasted good, too. Chalk up one success.

Now, some of the comments in the video suggested that I made yogurt, and not kefir. Well, presumably it had the same active cultures in it, and it tasted good. I was happy with the product, but I figured that I ought to try making kefir from grains.

More on that, later.

Why Fermented Foods?

I recently read The Good Gut by Stanford researchers Justin and Erica Sonnenburg. The book is about caring for your microbiome, the microbes that inhabit your gut and keep you healthy.

One of their recommendations is to eat more fermented foods that are full of beneficial live cultures. I started by trying kefir, a fermented milk product that can be found in most grocery stores. My local store has this brand.

It tastes pleasant enough, and I have already noticed a difference in my...um...end product of digestion.

With regard to other fermented foods, there is sauerkraut, but I'm not sure if the sauerkraut that I buy at the store has live cultures in it to feed my microbiome. Supposedly, it is possible to find fermented pickles in stores, but I haven't hunted for them. 

Not only that, man does not live by kefir and sauerkraut, alone. (I hope.) I've decided to try fermenting my own foods at home. It is supposed to be easy. My wife is thinking, "Oh boy. This is going to be the year of weird food." Well, maybe, but I'll give it a shot.

Growing my own micro-organisms for food production is not totally new to me. I've been making sourdough bread for many years. I raised my latest starter from the wild. The story of my sourdough adventure is described in my other blog, The Sourdough Chronicles.

My first attempt was to make my own kefir.