Im not keeping grains anymore, my fiance didnt like the stuff, and its a bit cheesy tasting for me... it was interesting. Id probably do it again when I find some good local milk to do it with.

I got my grains from Wyndham Soapworks. Its cheesy tasting. If you make a smoothie, it comes "alive" in about 10 mins (really bubbly, neat to watch) Not pleasant and sweet like yogurt. Could probably strain it thru a coffee filter like yogurt cheese and make a good spread out of it. Theres a pretty good Yahoo! group think its Keffir_Making.

Good luck! (I dont read here often, so feel free to email me)

Yes but no longer keeping grains. From my perspective kefir is almost identical to cultured buttermilk in taste but much more trouble since you have to filter out the grains. Cultured buttermilk you just dump about 1/3 old into the new milk and wait a day presto. kefir and cultured buttermilk can be used inter changably in recipes as far as i can tell so salad dressing cucumber soup bisquits etc should work with either. I could not prove nor disprove any of the health claims you will read about. I like buttermilk and kefir both about the same taste wise. You can pick up a fresh start of buttermilk culture or yogurt culture in most any grocery.

I never heard of kefir before, but want to pass on this info re-buttermilk.
My mother-in-law used to make cultured buttermilk from dry powdered milk at very low cost. She began with whole natural buttermil to get the proper enzymes, then mixed the powder per directions for sweet milk and then added about 1/4 of buttermilk. Let sit overnight and mix throughly. After the first batch she used her own buttermilk to make subsequent batches. The flavor of the 'sweet" milk wasn't too great but the buttermilk was as good as store bought.

Lesli, we grow kefir. Everyone around here pronounces it "Keéfer." I say "kefír." (accent over the i) But I really don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced. Perhaps kefirlover can tell us.

Anyway I LOVE the stuff! Half our family loves it and half can't stand it.

We use goat's milk to make ours. Since the goats are not presently in milk I've frozen our grains. Grains can be rolled in powdered milk and sealed in a ziplock or jar, in the freezer and kept for months. To re-activate one simply puts them in milk and starts straining and replenishing the milk on a daily basis. Within few days they are producing again.

One thing we've noticed is that one can get slimy, yucky kefir when changing between forms of milk. There's no problem in going between goat's milk and cows milk. But when one changes between bottled milk and powdered milk, or vice a versa, it may take a few days for the culture to adjust. Until it does we feed the product to our animals.

I knew it was good for you. But wow! kefirlover's write up is amazing! I'm going to post another interesting site. This is the one which helped us when we started with Kefir.

Our family first learned of kefir when we were living in the Sierra of Puebla, in Mexico, in the 90s. There, the locals produced and consumed kefir. But they called it "bulgaros." We got a start from them and enjoyed it for about a year. But we were due to spend a year back in the USA, and couldn't bring it back with us. It took till 2005 for me to learn what it was called in English! We got a start from someone local I bet, if you join Freecycle, you might find someone who can give you a start. We've given away many starts.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Here is a link that might be useful: Dom's kefir site

Kefir will also end all poverty and usher in a system of governance that it fair, effective, small, and free to run.

Oh I thought we were just making claims, I didn't know that we had to back them up...

I'm a vermicomposter so please excuse my funny name in your Homesteading forum. . .
I was buying commercial kefir for about a year and made the jump to making my own. Some people say it is a pain and it was in the beginning because I was too compulsive about saving all the kefir grains but I got over that and pour from a jar thru a small netted colander into a 4-cup pyrex.
Started making my own to economize -- am thrifty so there weren't too many area where I could save. . .
Love it! I add some powdered milk to the 2% that I use and there is a lot of kefir and kefir grain production.

Going to look for a Kefir forum. . . is there one?

Nell

You can buy kefir grains off craigslist and ebay. I make kefir daily, I have 2 pint batches going which I have to drain through a plastic sieve and restart every 24 hours. I put a little juice in them and some Stevia for a sweetener. It tastes really great put in the freezer until some ice crystals start to form at the edges, it tastes like a tart ice cream or sherbert.

I once had trouble with kefir because I didn't do a consistent 24 hour batch and left it too long frequently, which makes it hard to strain out the grains.

Nancy