Got several hudred new Newsletter subscribers since that post right after the email last night and didn’t even mind that a few nefarious souls (seven) signed up, got the Newsletter link, then unsubscribed and reported me to their ISPs as a spammer. Onward.
So just about a little more than a week ago I knew nothing about kefir. As I do, and as I admonish, Google is the world at your fingertips. Within an hour, I knew a lot. I knew you could start it from other kefir, there are powder starters, liquid starters (just kefir, probably) and grains. And, there are desiccated grains and fresh. The former requires you reconstitute them and it takes a week. I wanted fresh ones, because I don’t trust that they reconstitute fully.
I ordered from someone: live raw milk kefir grains (I’m still mystified as to how one forms them from primordial nothings—but I wasn’t searching for that—and if it turns out God created them I’m gonna be pissed).
Here’s what I got:
Kefir Grains?
I was scratching my head.
Zero instructions. Just a moist box in USPS with a bag of milk and a bag of water (the water, to fill the void). And I laughed. “I just got scammed for $9.95 plus shipping and handling!” Perfect! I wanted to fire off an email admonishing the vedor to go with a $24.99 price point. Half the work, double the return.
So it sat there for a while. Then, after my amusement at the situation turned to astonishment at why someone would go to the trouble, I went back to the website. “1 tablespoon, enough for a whole quart.” I fingered the bag, sitting right there next to where I’m typing. And I felt………GHTs.
…GHTs are officially known as “Gelatinous Hard Things”…a term coined in the Admiral’s Mess of the US Seventh Fleet Staff, and I was there and a part of it. All the super cool, loved and adored mess stewards back in those ’80s were part of the PEP (Philippine Enlistment Program) where since the very early 1900’s, the US Navy enlisted X number of Filipinos every year without citizenship or other documentation (it was a road to citizenship, immigration, and establishing family and roots in the US). As an officer, many of these young men were my favorites. They uniformly did very well and outcompeted whiteys in performance regularly. (I just made a note to blog about specifics in my Lifestyle & Motivation category soon.)
What it was, those GHTs, I believe, was Gulaman in coconut milk, served as a dessert. None of us ever really asked and there was no Google. It was GHTs to us.
…So back from the massive diversion there, let’s just pour that whole bag into a quart glass bottle, fill it up with raw milk, cover it with a coffee filter—twisted & tightened for elements of specific style—and wait a day.
I put it on top of the refrigerator.
I’d read lots of stuff about warm & light vs. cool & dark, but this is bacteria and yeast. Warm & light, for me. Thirty hours later, I was like this:
I think fermentation in general is just too cool. And as another aside, I absolutely loath the uniquely American proclivity of refrigerating fucking everything; and immediately; and don’t even get me started on fucking tomatoes which ought never, ever experience cold (eat a cherry tomato hot from the sun…). I realized this when living in France and noticing that the French store their cheeses covered, in the cupboard—rarely the fridge.
1st Batch
I’m not going to go through a recipe because there are a million of them and if I was to choose, go with MAS, just because I haven’t been to Seattle in almost 30 years—but was there a dozen times in late 1983 / early ’84 and have a private affinity for the place. Or, I like Michael a lot. Take your pick.
The pic above was right after I took the stick blender to it after the straining. It’s a very useful tool for this application.
I’m a self experimenter always and so I wanted to change things up for batch #2. I’d gotten an email from Brent Pottenger of AHS Founder fame telling me that goat milk kefir was the bomb. Her’s part of a comment response to someone about goat milk kefir (edited slightly).
So I made my first batch of kefir from ready raw milk grains I got via the internet. Just a tablespoon in a ziplock baggie of raw milk. No need to rehydrate, wait a week, etc. Worked like a charm.
First batch was 100% organic raw milk from Organic Pastures here in CA, which I can get easily from Lunardi’s 5-min away in 2 directions. It was great, pungent, sour. Reminded me of the love my dad and grandfather imparted in me for buttermilk (I’ll never forget the time, in the late 60s, maybe early 70s, when my dad and grandfather (maternal) stopped at a market for the express purpose of getting buttermilk, and they drank it in the parking lot!).
I always like to experiment so 2nd batch was 25% minimal pasteurized goat milk cream top, 25% minimal pasteurized 100% grassfed organic Jersey from Saint Benoit (the best tasting cows milk on Earth), and 50% of the same raw milk. Way better in terms of creaminess, lightness of curds, etc. My homemade cow milk kefir tends to separate into curds & whey in the fridge, but less so with this.
In the meantime, I got some goat milk kefir from WF and I’m really sold on it. I highly prefer the taste & texture of good cow milk to goat milk (we actually had a milk producing goat when I was a kid, and so did neighbors—so while I have milked many goats, never a cow). But I did not like the taste of raw goat milk or, rather, way preferred cow. My dad is the same way. We had friends who had both one cow and some goats and we got both goat & cow milk. But goat kefir is far superior to cow in taste & texture in my opinion.
….Just had a thought. What would goat cream butter be like? I love goat cheese. When I lived in France, one of my favorites was the log, and you let it sit out and get pungent. A layer of really strong “mucous” forms between the skin of the log and the harder, cheesy part in between. It can sting your mouth it’s so strong; and therefore, I love it.
It was in response to his comment about the superiority of the fat profile and composition of goat’s milk for humans.
OK, I didn’t give you a step-by-step recipe with pictures. A million out there. Get fresh grains and go for it. Critically visit MAS’s link. All you need.
CHESS EXPERT IN A WEEK!!!
Alright, so how do you equally get to be a chess expert in a week? Before you click away or close your browser, wouldn’t it be cool to easily beat 99%+ of people in the world who know the rules? If so, then read on and you can find out how. It does not take much time; rather, it takes a little specific focus (I’ll have to teach this to Tim Ferriss, as this is right up his alley).
If you’re still reading, here’s my light credentials. In High School I got the bug. Didn’t take much time, once serious, to beat everyone in my circle all the time, every time, adults and peers alike (it was cool to demolish teachers and church elders every single time). The computer appliances were just coming out (game shops had the first models) and I could beat them easily. I began playing postal chess (moves via a 9c postcard, back in the day), six games going at once. Played in tournaments and got into speed chess, which sharpens you like crazy. …About a year ago maybe, I put out the word on Twitter and Facebook to play Chess with Friends and went about 60-0.
Now I’m not writing this actually to teach you to be a chess expert in a week, though if you have such esoteric aspirations this will work. Otherwise, for the rest, it’s but an example of how to form a method first, act later—in whatever you do—and get authoritative very quickly.
So, what’s the worst way to learn to be a chess expert in a week?
Easy: play people as bad and incompetent as you. You’ll both remain bad and incompetent players. OK, so you need to play people far better than you. Easy. That applies to everything. But good chess players are rare, very rare. It’s geek elite. You can join a local club, get on the Internet—all effective—but you’ll have to contend with BS and that takes time. So, how did I manage this in 1977/78?
I bought myself a load of chess books written by the masters and grandmasters (over 20 of them). These were good and effective books. Why? Same reason a good cookbook can teach you to be a good cook and to quickly get to making your own recipes. It doesn’t go on and on with endless text on principles and methods and techniques and so on. It has a bunch of recipes. Those chess books had a bunch of games, hundreds of games. And just like a recipe, you site there, move each piece according to the recipe and make sure you understand why that master move was made—bonus when you understand how a lowly pawn advance just radically changed the balance of power and the game has become that mover’s game to lose.
Summary.
- You can’t learn to be a chess expert in a week playing people as bad as you are, anymore than you can be a good cook by teaming up with someone who can’t cook.
- You have to seek out those who are far better than you, and whether in person or via their published recipes or games, understand what they did and why they did it.
- It happens very quickly if you decide you have to do it.
Got it? Alright, go be a competent chess player and offer your beaten opponent some fresh kefir that you made yourself, as a friendly gesture of consolation.
“didn’t even mind that a few nefarious souls (seven) signed up, got the Newsletter link, then unsubscribed and reported me to their ISPs as a spammer.”
LOL.
Sounds like Evelyn’s on spring break. :-)
I store my cheese covered in the cabinet. Same with butter.
People have to be idiots to refrigerate everything. Buy it fresh, consume it while it’s still fresh, and if it gets some mold, hack it off and toss the blue part over the fence to the idiot neighbor’s dog that won’t shut up.
When we buy good cheese which is somewhat rare now, because we almost never do bread or even water crackers, it sits under a glass cover on the counter until it’s done. The only cheese that gets refrigerated is the odd block of ghetto cheddar or pepper jack for omelets or other such cooked stuff–and of course the shredded Parmesan for when we’ve run out of the old moldy dry block we trim and then shave onto a salad.
How about the plastic wrap around even expensive cheeses at places like Whole Food (whole paycheque) ? That’s really bad too. From what I’ve been taught cheese should not be cut from the round until it is purchased. Plus, in a lot of quasi upmarket supermarkets there isn’t anyone around to provide a sliver of any given cheese for a customer to taste. It’s all so pseudo.
Yea, good ones should come in a waxed paper sort of wrapping.
(longtime reader of your blog, haven’t posted a comment before yesterday…)
Yeah, so, I started a kefir thing too, recently.
I’m already starting to feel stressed out about keeping the grains alive. What will I do with all of the perpetual kefir? What if I can’t keep up with it?
Agh!
(I made a loaf of bread with it last night, taking advantage of kefir’s natural yeasts. Not bad.)
Leigh
I saw sources where you could leave it submerged in a bit of raw milk in the fridge for up to 4 weeks, then you need to rinse off with cold water and replenish the milk. Google ‘how to store kefir grains’ I stored mine for 4-5 days this way, no problem.
Keep what you need alive and the rest dies? I am sure as hell not gonna be neurotic about bacteria. Oh, wait, this is how it starts to end, huh? ( ;P )
Hey, just to chip in, you could also put your kefir grains in milk in a container and freeze for up to 6 months. When you need to use it again, just thaw in the fridge, throw away the milk used for storage and replace with new milk.
Many people dislike the taste of goats milk, as it tastes “goaty” this would included myself – but I grew up milking cows, so maybe I’m just biased. But, according to this goat milker and home cheese maker, you can get rid of that taste by fine straining of the milk, which gets rid of goat dander and the like. I can’t verify this personally, but anyone who is as serious about his milk and cheesemaking as this guy, probably knows what they are talking about.
Now that you are mastering the art of kefir making, the next logical step is to do some kefir cheesemaking – it is surprisingly easy. You can do an extended fermentation, such that it separates into curds and whey, or add some rennet (or junket tablets, if you can still find them) to set the milk and cut it into curds and whey. Strain it overnight in a cloth or nut milk bag, and you have soft cheese.
I then cut and salt that cheese and press it using my $3 cheese press – a hamburger press from the dollar store (when you have the curd out of the bag for salting and cutting, put a disc in the bottom of the bag, reload the curd, put a disc in the top, fold the bag over, and then place in the burger press). I then use two adjustable bungy cords and a pot to make the “press”, as shown by this fellow. wonderfully easy.
Press for 24 hrs then salt the outside of the cheese and wrap with parchment paper and a rubber band. Store in the fridge and change the paper once or twice over the next few days. Finally, I rub with olive oil, wrap again and store in the bottom of my coolest cupboard. Longest I have gone is 30 days – hard to resist it for that long!
When you do this for the first time, it becomes apparent why cheesemaking is such an old art – it turns milk into a solid, easily transported form that doesn’t need refridgeration, and gets better with age. And it doesn;t need high tech equipment, or even any cooking.
To see a great example of a family business making kefir cheese, check out the this place in NY state http://www.kefircheese.com. If they were near me, I’d be their most loyal customer!
Btw, USDA rules are that commercial cheese can be made from raw milk and sold, without restriction, if it is aged for a minimum of 60 days. Look on the labels of various hard cheese and some will saw raw or unpasteurised milk.
Kefir grains are a miracle, Niko. Just bask in the wonder, mate.
True. Nobody knows how they got started and nobody can make them de novo. They are the ultimate. Kefir won’t make kefir grains.
Forget about Mother Theresa. Kefir’s where it’s at.
Richard, I’ve been making kefir for a couple of years now. The grains just keep growing and growing. I put the milk and grains in a covered bucket by the balcony door so it’s cool but not cold.
I’d been giving away the grains to people who want them and once again there’s way too many. I so loathe to just throw them out.
One thing I’ve noticed: the kefir grains are quite particular. They like what they like. I’m using the milk from a small dairy and the only place town that sells this milk is the halal supermarket. The whey is yellow not colourless like water. A couple of times I got lazy and used big dairy milk and the kefir grains did not appreciate the change. At all.
If a person wants to take a break from breakneck kefir production (like in the summer when kefir goes nuts in the warm weather), make sure you put fresh milk on the grains if you want to leave them in the refrigerator. That way they’ll eat slowly but they’ll have something to eat. Kefir making is the ultimate good stuff for us ‘slackers’.
“Kefir and Chess” = SEO fail! Good article none-the-less.
….You would not believe how many versions of various “sex with animals” search terms gets people over here. :)
“SEO fail!”
Or brilliance! You can never really tell, given some of the weird search terms that ends up getting people here.
If anyone abuses my kittycats, they are dead meat.
I think Tim beat you to the punch by publishing the Four Hour Chef. (It is a great piece of work in print form.)
I make all the above along with fermented veggies. Though, I have never bothered to ascertain as to if it does much to gut flora. I need to research it. In the meantime, it tastes delicious and I get to say, “Yeah, I cut up 5lbs of cabbage and created sauerkraut in a hotel room.”
I am liking the bits in the comments about goat’s milk. Gotta try that.
uscf 2302
i’ve met bright gamesmen who could make master in 6 months…but not expert in a week. Though the kids with computer drills can cover in hours what took us days.
i’m using ‘expert’ colloquially. but 99% of people who know the rules would be easily beaten even by a C rated player (if I recall from back in the day—i haven’t had a rating since like 1982 or something). As I recall I was in the 1900s (A level? … i forget all the cuttoffs). You’d kick my ass.
I do recall when I first started in tournaments after getting tired of beating everyone at school and was going through games that I estimated my rating initially at 1400 but I quickly got it to 1600.
the one time i made kefir cheese it was some of the most complex and rich tasting cheese i’ve ever had.
I’m gonna have to give it a try. Question, how big of a cheese is one quart of kefir going to yield?
When I do my cheesemaking, two quarts of milk yields about 3/4 pound of cheese.
put another way, from my 4″ diameter mould (the burger press) I get a wheel about 1 1/2 inches high.
The firmness of this cheese is a bit less than that of a feta (you can salt a whey brine and soak the cheese in that to make a feta, add some balsamic for a real taste treat). It firms up after some fridge aging and even more in the cupboard, top the point of a mild cheddar.
i do warn you, doing home cheesemaking is, like cooking, addictive. there are endless variations to explore, and all of them are good!
Amerkins love their fridges! :)
I live in Holland, and when I return to the US to visit family I always bring big wedges of raw-milk Gouda for the gang. I tell em: you can leave it out of the fridge; it actually tastes better that way. So the wedges remain on the counter for a few days, but inevitably folks start getting nervous about it “spoiling” and eventually it is whisked into the eternal chill.
Question for those who make kefir cheese:
This may sound stupid, but what’s the best way to separate the kefir grains from the curds in order to make cheese?
When I make kefir, I strain the whey into a big glass measuring cup through a little strainer until the whey has been reduced to dripping (5ish minutes). After this, I pour the whey out, and use a spatula to mix the kefir curds out from the grains, leaving me with a yogurt consistency. At this point I dump the grains into fresh milk and bottle the finished product. Rinse and repeat.
If I were to make cheese, I’m assuming straining the whey would have to go for a day or so?
I haven’t looked into it but first I would make my kefir as per usual, plastic sieve to get the grains out. Then re bottle and let curds form or put in whatever that thing is to make it happen quicker, go from there.
I have to confess at this point my kefir is not made with grains, but just from using a previous kefir milk (like perpetuating a sourdough).
However, on the topic of cheesemaking – two schools of thought;
1) use kefir, or any bacterial starter (available from cheesemaking suppliers) to get things going and set the milk using rennet (or junket tablets)
2) let the kefir do the job on its own, without rennet.
I use the first method, mixing the previous kefir with fresh milk about 1:20, heat to 25-30C and leave for a few hours, but *not* until the milk sours/curdles. Stir in the rennet and leave to set for an hour, then cut the curds.
The second method, used at Dom’s kefir site, uses the lactic acid to curdle the milk. It doesn’t make for as firm a curd.
But experiment a bit and see. The Fankhauser’s cheese site is a good place to start, with his basic cheese recipe.
It’s actually a lot easier than many cooking recipes….
Goat butter is decent. They sell it in Waitrose in the UK. It’s fairly pale in colour and very hard. I still prefer the taste of Kerrygold though.
… and Sainsbury’s. St Helen’s brand. More than decent, it’s actually very good.
I can get goat butter here in Vancouver too, it is a different taste from cows butter, not as “buttery”.
But I have taken to making my own butter from whipping cream (36%MF).
I culture it with a tbspn of some kefired milk for a day or two. Keep half as “creme fresh” for making Gordon Ramsay’s scrambled eggs, and the other half, put in a canning jar (to be 1/3 full) and shake or use whisk to make butter. Whisking is faster but the shaking is some good HIIT exercise!
Like kefir, once you’ve made your own cultured butter, there’s no going back…
It’s no shit, Charles. After a mere 2 weeks with just over a week making my own kefir, I’m lifelong and certain of it.
Have been suggesting (because I don’t know) to folks who email about milk intolerance, do what I do. 2-3 gulps of kefir right from the bottle, the glass of raw milk (or whatever you can get), komucha chaser. Cover all little hugger bases and see if it works.
Lactase is a huge part of the equation, but part of that is undoubtedly that infants have a sterile gut to start with. Seems there is a lot of anecdote out there that a healthy gut can handle shit.
I will toot my own horn here…I made a corny ass instructional video with kefir years ago: http://youtu.be/f-vqxotKcH0
Also have one from a while back on kombucha: http://youtu.be/gV9QmnBX3VM
I just recently competed at the 2013 USA indoor track and field championships…I got my ass kicked by the young guys but I still made it and I attribute most of my success to recovery with kefir, raw milk and shit tons of coffee and beef. When I am freaked out and pissed off I calm down with kombucha. Good shit.
I’m loving your direction lately, fermented dairy and monetary education, good stuff. And I definately need some monetary education. I have recently relized, my parents really knew little about money, and neither do I. I need to learn. Then, here you come with these posts. Serendipity. As for dairy, love all aspects of it! Too much. I can, and have, eaten an entire 5 lb container from Sams in 36 hours. Like you, I love sour tastes, like butter milk, and am crazy about kefier. I had toyed with the idea of making my own, but it seems rather daunting. But thanks to you, I think I will give it a shot. Around the time I discovered kefier, and kombucha, I found kimchi, man is that stuff good, think I may give that a shot too. Don’t know how into fermented food you are going to get, though it seems like something that might be right up your alley, but I decided to google fermented onions, and found a blog you might be interested in. She has a series called “52 weeks of bad-ass bacteria”, have not read all 52, but some really tasty sounding stuff.
http://www.deliciousobsessions.com/2012/03/52-weeks-of-bad-a-bacteria-week-12-pickled-lacto-fermented-onions/
She also has an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of mason jars, and whey starters.
http://www.deliciousobsessions.com/2012/02/by-the-whey-side-why-ive-stopped-using-whey-in-my-vegetable-ferments/
http://www.deliciousobsessions.com/2012/05/52-weeks-of-bad-a-bacteria-week-18-fermenting-methods-weve-had-it-all-wrong/
Looking forward to more on the dairy hack!
Sorry, at work, in a hurry, did not proof read. 5 lb container of cottage cheese. God, I love that stuff.