Science Adventures in a Super Food

After 26 hours of fermenting at 78degF - curdy!

Last month I took a trip to a raw dairy farm in Pennsylvania with a few friends and found myself on a whole new adventure. I'm not much of a raw milk advocate, largely because I don't really understand the whys and hows of pasteurization. But more importantly, because I live in Maryland. The sale of raw milk is illegal here. But the opportunity to buy raw milk from a highly reputable farm couldn't be passed up. I'm not quite sure what we expected a raw dairy farm to be like. It was a small store, probably 30'x8' in size, packed with, obviously, raw milk... cow milk, goat milk... butter... and other classically sustainability-oriented products like pastured meat and local honey. Manning the store was a young boy, probably not twelve years of age. We gathered the bounty of illicit goods and filled our cooler full. Raw dairy. Ooh.

Then my friend said, "They sell kefir. I've always wanted to try that. Do you want to share some?" I'd heard of kefir, but really had no knowledge of what it really was. I thought it was Indian yogurt (wrong). What the heck, I thought, after all, I'm living out of the box here! Our hopes were dashed in seconds though, when the boy said they had no kefir available.

"We do have kefir grains, though, and you can make your own", interjected the boy's much older brother who had joined the room. Make it? Yes, he told us, it's sort of like making yogurt or soft cheese. The idea of trying kefir, this unfamiliar super food, was mildly interesting, but the idea of making kefir, now that was down right intriguing! Right down my alley. A nod, a shrug, and a few minutes later we were proud owners of a bottle of kefir grains. Now we just had to figure out what they heck that meant.

This is what the grains look like... kefir in the pot below

We came home with a small milk bottle of milk with some thingies in it and a set of instructions. Pretty straightforward: put thingies (more formally, grains) in crock, cover with milk, let sit 24 hours, strain out thingies. The liquid left is kefir. Best served as a smoothie made with frozen berries.

All well and good, then the instructions continue that the grains will grow over time. The grains need to be fed, essentially, and can be slowed down in the fridge, but they can be completely dried out and stored at room temperature for years.

So, what in the world were these grains? Not clear.  I did some research. I found kefir to be totally fascinating. Here's some cool things I learnt in the last few weeks:

• it is really funky stuff.. it looks weird... it acts weird.. tastes a bit weird.. and is very cool... and, apparently, is a super food. 
• kefir grains have nothing to do with plant material. The grains are globules of bacteria. Healthy bacteria that has powerful properties (probiotics) to support healthy digestive systems. 
• These grains look like jelly globs. The globs range from pea size to walnut size. We're measuring their growth for a science project. 
• kefir is actually a fermented dairy product with less than 1% alcohol content ....
• you can use any kind of dairy, and now that we quickly ran out of our raw whole cows milk, we're trying pastured pasteurized whole milk from South Mountain Creamery...
• kefir tastes like a very yeasty plain yogurt, but it's more unattractive to look at...it is definitely a liquid, with curded flakes that separate out... and I should say, our kefir because... 
• kefir originates from the Caucuses and is passed along through the growth of grains...
• attempts to reproduce kefir in a lab setting have failed, and it is unclear exactly what all the bacteria in the grains are.... 
• as I understand it, the grains will also change based on the bacteria in the environment they are in, so, it seems, your kefir is somehow uniquely your own... 
• kefir made commercially is not really kefir, but a dairy product made with major bacteria strains from kefir grains... 
• same is true of things called kefir culture... they are a few of the extracted bacteria and can't be used to grow kefir grains over time...
• when your kefir grows enough, you can split it and share it, but you have to keep feeding it by replacing the milk it sits in weekly... like sourdough... 
• it takes a little bit of work, a few minutes a week, and some forethought, but is pretty easy to manage...
• when you puree kefir with frozen blueberries and sugar it tastes just like a yogurt smoothie. 

There was a great video on fermented food by Sandor Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation,... there is a section on kefir, but the whole thing is fascinating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDtbvRZnw4

My son also found interesting YouTube videos on making kefir with coconut water, instead of dairy... to make fermented beverages.. called water kefir.... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-WGJG4A1mg