Health Benefits of Probiotic Kefir

Probiotic kefir is a yogurt-like ferment that was consumed thousands of years ago in the Caucasus Mountain region. The people of this area were said to be robust and have lengthy lifespans despite the harsh conditions in that region.  Was it possible that this was due, at least in part, to their consumption of dairy kefir? For my family, we physically feel better drinking our homemade raw milk dairy kefir on a regular basis.  It has become an essential part of our diet over the past 8 years! Could your family benefit from this probiotic powerhouse too? 

Probiotics around the world

The people of the Caucasus Mountain region were not alone in their consumption of fermented dairy. Before refrigeration was common, many traditional cultures fermented dairy to aid with preservation.  Yogurt, which is now so familiar in the United States, originated in Bulgaria, longfil came out of Scandinavia, laban is from the Middle East, dahi from India, and the list could go on.  Each of these cultures knew that fermentation would provide essential protection from disease-causing organisms that could contaminate their dairy and increase the health benefits as well!   

Probiotic kefir-the benefits

Since the age of refrigeration, we no longer technically need to ferment our dairy.  So why continue this ancient process?  For the health benefits!  Besides the probiotics contained within kefir, the process of fermentation literally pre-digests the milk and will partially break down lactose and casein.  This means that even people who cannot always tolerate fresh milk can ingest kefir or other fermented milk products.  

If the milk has been pasteurized, culturing can restore some of the many enzymes that are destroyed during heating including lactase which can aid in digesting lactose.  Lactase that is produced during the culturing process allows those who are sensitive to dairy tolerate fermented products.  

A huge probiotic advantage of kefir are the many strains of bacteria.  It is estimated that kefir has around 10 times more bacterial strains than yogurt.  Additionally, while yogurt contains transient bacteria that passes through the intestinal tract, kefir can actually colonize the gut with beneficial bacteria.  Studies have proven that many of the bacteria in kefir are resistant to acid and bile salts, and they have the capacity to adhere to the epithelial cells in the intestine.  This is exciting because it means that the beneficial bacteria in kefir can survive the digestion process and take up residence in the gut!  

Probiotic kefir as a smoothie

The consistency of kefir is similar to a yogurt smoothie. It is much easier to drink kefir than eat it as you would yogurt.  While the sour/tart flavor is similar to yogurt, it also has a yeasty taste that makes it unique and slightly effervescent.   

Culturing kefir can be done with a powder starter, but this starter does not allow you to continue to ferment in the traditional way and you will soon find yourself out of starter and purchasing more since it must be used with each batch. Kefir grains, however, are the natural starter for kefir and they will only continue to grow as you progress with your fermenting. There is no need to purchase any additional grains and, in fact, you will most likely end up with grains you can share with family or friends!  

Getting started with your probiotic kefir

• Locate kefir starter--You can check with your local Weston Price chapter leader to see if they ever offer kefir grains.  Other options include local holistic mom groups which can be found on Facebook.  If you cannot locate them locally, they are available for purchase through Cultures for Health, The Happy Herbalist,  or Kombucha Kamp.  
• Make sure you have a jar to ferment in.  Having it as airtight as possible is best.  You may want to consider purchasing an airlock like the pickl-it or a pickle pipe.
• Start with the best quality milk you can find.  Personally, I consider clean, raw milk from pastured animals free of all hormones and antibiotics to be the best for our family.  However, it can be difficult to find sources of raw milk depending on what state you call home.  If raw milk is not an option, the next best thing would be low temperature pasteurized, non-homogenized, organic (or pastured, hormone and antibiotic-free milk from a source you can trust) milk. Ultra-pasteurized milk will not work for kefir because it has been too processed and the kefir grains will most likely not survive very long.  
• Print out our recipe and get started brewing!  

Probiotic Kefir Recipe

4 cups whole milk
2 Tablespoons of grains or one package of kefir starter/powder

1. Gather your supplies: Glass jars with a lid. Kefir is an anaerobic ferment so it does not like to be exposed to air. I love culturing under airlock. An airlock can ensure that your culture isn’t exposed to oxygen. This allows the beneficial bacteria to grow in the ideal conditions by allowing carbon dioxide to escape. You can accomplish this without the airlock, but it may be necessary to “burp” your jars and allow some of the carbon dioxide to escape.
2. Take your clean, glass container that can be sealed, put your kefir grains in the jar and pour your milk into the container and seal the lid. You can warm your milk to room temperature before adding it to your grains, or simply add it straight from the fridge!
3. Depending on how warm your home is, culturing can take anywhere from 24+ hours. The shorter the fermentation, the more “sweet” your kefir will be. It is often easier to get used to the flavor of kefir is you make sure not to let it get too sour by fermenting too long.
4. Once your kefir has fermented, use a plastic bowl, strainer, and spoon to strain the kefir grains out of the liquid kefir. Sometimes it is thick and requires a lot of stirring to separate the kefir grains from the kefir liquid. Once you have strained the kefir, simply put the grains back into your jar (you can wash the jar first; however, I will skip this step every other time or so since I do culture under airlock. If you are not culturing under airlock, I would recommend washing the jar each time). Next, pour more milk over the grains, close the lid, and wait for your next batch of probiotic-rich kefir to culture!

***Notes: Some people recommend rinsing your grains. I never do this as it can disrupt the colonies of bacteria and yeast. Plus, this rinsing requires filtered water as the grains should not be exposed to tap water. If you start with kefir grains grown in one type of milk, either pasteurized or raw, you must slowly transition them to the other milk by using increasing proportions of the milk you wish to change to. If you do not wish to make your probiotic kefir all the time, store your grains in milk in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. While they may be a little sluggish when you first take them out and start culturing again, they should perk up rather quickly. If you need to keep your grains in the refrigerator longer than a few weeks, make sure to change the milk that they are in so the cultures will have something to feed on. 

Tips for packing in the nutrition and making your probiotic kefir taste great!

We drink a probiotic kefir smoothie almost daily.  I love to use this drink to pack even more nutrition into our diets so I will use beets in our kefir quite often.  No one in our family loves beets just to eat, but we love the taste of them in our kefir!  I also add a pinch of spirulina, and sometimes chlorella, to our smoothies as well!  

We have all decided that fruit, especially bananas, are almost essential to making our breakfast drink taste great.  We often alternate fruit based on the season, and we rely on frozen fruit like blueberries and mango when we do not have access to fresh fruit.  Truly, almost any fruit tastes great in kefir, but banana truly is the one that makes the flavor of the kefir more mellow.

We are adding more recipes and healthy eating information so make sure to check our Healthy Eating section on the blog often!  Want more details about fermenting?  Check out our other home ferment recipes here!  

Remember…..don’t suffer from overwhelm!  Just take one small bite….one crunch…at a time!

Thanks for reading!

Research

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16280101

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626640/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24667318

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12728216

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3823980/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069868

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23824665