Homemade Kefir

Good Morning!

It's a balmy 9 degrees outside and I'm enjoying my first annual leave day for the year. I'm sitting almost directly underneath the air-con, right next to a jar of fermenting kefir.

So what is kefir? It is a fermented, probiotic milk drink. You can read more about it here, but basically it's similar to a really, really beneficial yoghurt. I haven't seen it commercially available pre-made anywhere locally, although that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

It's great for digestion and for restoring bacterial balance (and thus can be beneficial for the immune system).

I've never tried it before, but at work we sell the grains to make your own, and it's relatively cheap, $8.95 will get you 25L. One of the practitioners near us (a chiropractor-cum-health-advisor) tells lots of his clients to come in a buy it, but he doesn't tell them what it is first. I've been telling them all that they need to buy a yoghurt maker to make it, but I had someone tell me the other day you don't actually need one. Oops! So I thought, I'll give it a go.

I'm making mine with almond milk (latest obsession), and I've heard the almond gives it a nice taste.

Side note: It's pronounced KEY-fur, not KEF-ear, because that's pretty offensive in Afrikaans (Bryce Courtenay teaches me such useful things).

I should have probably saved this post for when my kefir has finished fermenting (tomorrow night, after fermenting at room temp for 36 hours and sitting in the fridge for 12), but hey, I've got the day off and you can all wait with baited breaths over how it turns out.

My fermenting kefir in a glass jar borrowed from work. There is a litre in there.

Products used: Almond milk and kefir grains. Total cost: $7.30/L.

Jacqui.