If you've never heard of kefir, I'm thrilled to be able to introduce you to this powerful immune booster and gut healer. I have had the joy of witnessing kefir change many lives through healing digestion and enhancing immune function.
Homemade kefir is an affordable and highly effective way to inoculate the gut with probiotics and beneficial yeasts. In my opinion, it is the easiest fermented food to make at home - and I make several! Kefir is loaded with beneficial microbes and is much healthier than yogurt (try comparing only the handful of strains of beneficial bacteria (and no beneficial yeasts) in yogurt to the more than 30 strains of both yeasts and bacteria found in kefir.
Be prepared for kefir grains to grow rather quickly over time! I use raw organic whole milk from grass fed cows to feed my grains. They will produce a pleasantly tangy and fizzy kefir and may be used with any type of milk: raw, pasteurized, whole, skim, and non-dairy (coconut, almond, rice, soy, etc). When transitioning between milk types, allow 2-3 days for culturing time to return to normal as the grains adjust to the new environment.
A single teaspoon of grains can culture 1 cup of milk in 1 day (or 1 pint of milk in 2 days). And trust me - these little guys like to multiply! To speed up culturing, you can give your jar a stir once every several hours and store it in a warm-ish place (on top of the fridge works great). You can also leave some "starter" kefir from the previous batch when beginning a new batch.