kefir!!!!
my kefir grains arrived in the mail from spain today! they were extremely well-packed, I didn't realize i was ordering them from some kind of company!
after opening the outer package, and rinsing out the milk
put the grains in some milk, covered it and let it sit for some hours before remembering it wasn't supposed to be in sunlight. then put it in a cupboard. apparently some enzymes die with sunlight or something.
here it is after about 12 hours. it hadn't gotten thick at all yet (a normal wait time is 24 hours), but it did form this skin, and some grains floated to the top. apparently grains "go into shock" when transported or when given a different type of liquid to sit in, so it might even take a week of trying before i get anything like yoghurt.
my master plan is to first breed tons of grains (potentially selling them; you can dry them so shipping is easier). if i have a ton of grains, and some dried and preserved, then i don't have to worry about killing them all on accident via experimenting. first i want to try normal yoghurt made with these grains and see if i can eat it without getting sick. then i can try to make cheese, butter, coconut milk yoghurt, and green tea mixed with honey.
i read that if you leave the grains in for "too long", the milk will separate into curds and whey, and that's how you make cheese and butter. if you tie up the kefir grains in a cheese-cloth it makes their removal painless later on (=no sieves necessary), so i went out and bought a pack of unbleached cotton gloves, cut off a finger and tied a string to one end, poked holes in the bag and am using that until i make/find something better.
