Making Milk Kefir Howto (Singapore)

1102 days ago

I am betting that you can find a lot of guides on the Internet on how to make Kefir. In fact, all you need to do is to go on Youtube and search for Kefir and you will be bombarded with tons of videos on how to make Kefir. But do note that most of them are made for countries with cooler climates. And of course, there are slightly different ways of making Kefir. Some of the equipment might be difficult to find in certain countries but plentiful in others. So, I guess perhaps writing a guide for making Kefir for Singaporeans should be quite useful to readers.

Anyway, this is what you need to make milk Kefir:

  1. Glass container (to ferment the Kefir in)
  2. Big bowl (large enough to fit the glass container)
  3. Kefir grains
  4. Milk (preferably fresh milk)
  5. Strainer (plastic tea strainer or those vegetable colander)
  6. Food grade wide mouth container (large enough for the strainer to be placed on the opening)

Before I begin, make sure that all the equipment is clean. Wash the glass container, strainer and wide mouth container thoroughly. The milk should not be exposed to the environment.

The first 4 “stuff” is needed when you start to make your milk Kefir. I would normally put in 1 to 20 parts of Kefir grains to milk. I guess this is a good amount of milk to ensure that your grains get enough milk in order for it to grow and thrive. You would want your grains to be healthy. Healthy grains produces the best Kefir. So, put in the milk and grains into the glass container and close the cover. Make sure that you allow air to enter/escape as the grains need to breathe. However, there is one major problem, especially in Singapore. If you leave the glass container (with the milk and grains) without tightening the cover, insects might be attracted to your milk. I am sure that there are several variations of yogurt which is made from ants but this is not what we are looking for. And it just looks disgusting.

So that is what the big bowl is for. Add some water to the bowl and place the glass container on it (water covering the sides of the glass container). This way, insects are not able to get into the container. And this method has one additional advantage. It helps to keep the milk cool(er). I estimate the temperature of most kitchens in Singapore is about 26 to 30 °C. Although the Kefir will ferment fine at these temperatures, it is not optimal. Dom recommends 20-22°C for the best and creamiest Kefir. Having  a water bath helps to reduce the temperature due to the effects of evaporation.

The next step is probably the hardest. You have to wait. Now this is based on experimenting. If you like a more tart beverage, you should ferment longer. Usually it would take about 12-16 hours in Singapore’s weather to get a balance between tartness and creaminess. Of course, this is me. You will have to experiment yourself to get a Kefir to your liking.

After you have fermented the Kefir, you will  need to strain the Kefir grains from the Kefir itself. And since I am using a rather fine tea strainer for the job, I normally would use a spoon to scope up the bigger grains first. This is so as not to clog up the strainer. If you use a colander, it should be fine if you don’t scope up the grains. Place the food grade container below the strainer. If you have a big enough strainer, just dump all the Kefir onto the strainer and let it do it job. If it gets stuck, just shake the strainer gently about. The creamy liquid that flows into the container is your precious Kefir. You can drink it fresh (like me) or ripen the Kefir. The reason why I drink it fresh is because I lack the space for ripening the Kefir. I read that there are a lot of health advantages in ripening your Kefir. Please refer to Dom’s site for more information.

If you would like to ripen the Kefir, you would need another container to store the Kefir. For ripening, you can cover the container tightly but you need to “degass” the Kefir once per day. It means that you have to open the container to let the air escape or it might explode due to the pressure. However the water bath method works too. And it is much safer since the un-tighten cover will allow air to escape from the container and there is no risk of exploding bottles.

Now after you have finished straining the Kefir, you will get a mess of Kefir grains mixed with curds in your strainer. I would suggest you to just dump it into the Kefir glass container. If you would like to wash the glass container, please go ahead. I normally only wash the container after 3 to 4 batches. The milk Kefir still remaining in the glass container helps to maintain a low ph value to inhibit bacteria and that is what we want. Of course, it might not look at attractive after a while with all those delta rivers and curds all about on the walls of the container. Some people rinse their Kefir grains with clean unchlorinated water or milk. I don’t. And Dom recommends you NOT to rinse the grains after each batch as they might affect the micro-flora of the Kefir grains.

After that, you repeat the process over and over again. Your grains should grow about double the amount in a week or so, so you should have plenty of grains to share with your friends and relatives. Remember, the Kefir grains are living organisms and they need plenty of food (read milk) to grow. So feed your grains every day! In return they will provide you with the miracle of Milk Kefir for life.

Update (18/2/2010) – Dom recommends ripening the Kefir in an air-tight container for 1 or 2 days at room temperature to get the full benefit of Kefir. I will be trying that out myself soon. Need to find myself a strong airtight container – remember carbon dioxide is produced during ripening as well! You won’t want an explosion!

Kefir