Kefir is not thick

[hidajatr]

Hi,

My name is Rianto from Indonesia. I have recently started to make kefir and bought the grains from local supplier.

The issues that I face when making the milk kefir is as follow:
- i ferment 24 hours outside, and the kefir is usually split, and from the reading it seems to be overfermenting. There seems to be 'island' forming at the top of the milk and when stirred it becomes really frothy which makes it hard to strain. Why is this?
- i make a test by making one batch of kefir in the fridge. It takes about 5 days before it has sour taste of kefir, but I found that the kefir is quite thin and the grains was sinking. Why is that? Is it dependent on the milk quality? I use pasteurized fresh milk (not UHT).

Thank you for your help.

Rgds,
Rianto

[Robinstar]

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, many times the grains don't rise in the fridge because there's less yeast activity which is responsible for the grains rising. That's pretty typical and not usually due to the quality of the milk.

[hidajatr]

Thank you for your reply.

I have managed to reduce the whey and curd from subsequent batches. The taste seems to be already ok (sour and refreshing) but still relatively quite thin. Any advise to make it thicker? Thanks.

[Robinstar]

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.

[Javipi]