Yemoos Nourishing Cultures Forum

Brown sugar and molasses is quite the heavy mineral load and that may be overwhelming the grains and causing excess yeast (and that slimy stuff on the surface). Also that extreme heat is probably not helping either. You may want to try a lighter recipe with lighter sugars to help compensate. Fizz is...

When it gets that sour and cheese-like, use more milk or less grains to help balance them. Don't worry about the thickness. The kefir should taste pleasant to you and that's when it should be okay to drink.

Milk keif grains do usually grow quite slowly. It's hard to see them grow each batch, but after 3 weeks, they probably should have grown by now. Sometimes there's an adjustment period with the new milk and environment and may naturally start growing soon. When yous say it takes 48 hours to ferment, ...

Thanks for that! That's interesting. I know hot temperatures really cater the yeast, but its interesting to hear that simply fermenting out of the fridge was enough to help the bacteria rebalance. Thanks.

Hi Sudhakar,

Go by smell and taste. If it smells or tastes odd / wrong to you, then hold off on drinking. Let it rebalance or rest it in the fridge until it smells more pleasant.

It's easy for store bought yogurt or kefir because all the variables are controlled, they know what strains go into their products and they will get a fairly consistent bacteria count every time. With homemade kefir, its a wild science experiment with too many variables and its always changing. Much...

Hi Rianto, It does sound like it is over-fermenting. Try cutting way back on the amount of grains or add more milk (or both) and see if that helps. You should try to catch it before there's too much whey and too much curds. If so then increase the milk or cut back on the grains. As far as the fridge...

Try finding a cool spot to ferment. If it ferments slow and steady, it tends to be much thicker. Do a shorter ferment and try letting it sit in the fridge for a while. That's one way I've found that it helps get it thicker.

If the grains are moving up and down, there's at least some activity. The white may be from the ginger, I'm not sure what else that could be. Try just sugar without ginger and see if that helps. Use a mix of light and dark sugar. I don't think its the airlock. I've done ginger beer with airlocks wit...

Oh yes it can get fizzy, sometimes really fizzy like that. What's in it? When I put ginger in, it tends to go crazy like that. Yummy though.