I have finally come around to perfecting milk kefir and water kefir is getting better

Regular readers of the blog will remember me complaining about my milk kefir brews and me talking about how it was inconsistent and not going the way I wanted. And then I complained about the various factors that were changing in between brews and how there needed to be a way to control for those. Then there was talk of the grains etcetera.

The good news with regards to milk kefir is that now I can make consistently thick and smooth kefir, with a turnaround time of two days with pretty sustainable consistency. I can control for the fizziness, the sourness and the thickness of the brews too, in addition to the sweetness which should be self-evident. I've also improved my process, instead of using the cheesecloth I've been using my steel filter. It does make the process a lot quicker and less messy, but it also has large enough holes that the smaller grains of starter culture may pass through. Not an ideal situation but a reasonable compromise given all the other variables, if I may say so. Right now I have two separate batches going, half-jar each, one from the continuous batch I've brewed over many months, and other from the starter that I separated away several months ago to save as a backup batch in case my primary batch got spoiled. That I'm using both batches actively is a risky game for sure, but it's a fun little experiment.

On the matter of water kefir, I know for sure that the 2-day guarantee of water kefir is not at all true and I need to brew it for two weeks plus, potentially three weeks if I don't run a bubbler through. But with bubbler running most of the time, I can have a decent batch out in 10 days. Which is nice because a gallon of water kefir takes a while to run out. There's still some variables to adjust, I'm afraid my brews may be far too yeast-forward, and there's potential of contamination. And the fact that I've never really done flavored batches, which undermines my original project goal, a little bit. Still, lots of good progress and I know for certain at this point that water kefir is not a total loss in terms of investment. People will like it and they'll enjoy it, specially in the summer.

I have a bit more to write on, about my kombucha, will put that out on a separate post.