Thread: Has anyone here tried A2 Milk or Kefir?

Has anyone here tried A2 Milk or Kefir?

I came across this type of fermented milk using Kefir grains yesterday. My homemade yogurt was also getting granules in it and it had a most distinguished flavor and I even wondered of I have stumbled on a variant of Kefir.

The health benefits of A2 milk are sure worth looking into.
My next goal is to make kefir from A2 milk.

Is anyone else on this journey?

I know nothing about A2 milk. I only buy regular pasteurized milk anyhow.
Kefir I do know quite well along with yogurt. The Kefir I brew myself just the same way I make yogurt.
I say brew because kefir relies on a type of yeast while yogurt is lactic acid bacteria fermentation.

I like to let the kefir ferment until it will be like a slightly fizzy buttermilk, it never really gets as solid as the yogurt does. I usually shake yogurt so it is drinkable but I also have a bag I use for straining yogurt to get a soft cheese from it.
The cheese it makes is soft and not very sour, kind of like cream cheese. It is used just like any other cream cheese, but since I don't salt it or anything it is something I try to use quickly instead of storing.
I can do the same thing with the kefir but the cheese it makes is not as smooth, not as solid and does not seem to taste as nice.

I found with them both it helps to heat the milk up to at least 180 degrees and letting it cool to where it just feels slightly warm against the skin before starting the fermentation. It is not just that it sterilizes the milk because he milk is aleady pasteurized, heating the milk starts the denaturization of the milk proteins and makes the yogurt set a bit stiffer.

I don't do this for health reasons, I just do this because I like yogurt and Kefir and I can make my own far more cheaply than I can buy it even if I buy the milk to make it with.
(The stores here usually charge about $6.00 for 750ml of yougurt and about $5.00 for 4L of milk.)

Dan when you make a new batch of yogurt are you using the previous batch as a starter? You would certainly make it faster if the milk was heated to begin with. Up till now I have just been using pasteurized milk unheated and adding some of the old culture as a starter and since I have been using the same bug over and over it has worked out quite well but over that time the strains at the two places I make it have varied, and I have developed a strain like kefir (my own strain), but it is pretty strong tasting. I've seen people drink kefir but I'm not sure I could do that with mine.
It was interesting about making the yogurt cheese. What sort of cloth did you use? I want to give that a go too.

So I'm looking for someone in NZ with the kefir grains culture.
The ultimate goal at the moment would be to combine the two and make kefir from A2 milk.

I often use old culture as my starter. I also buy new cultures from time to time.

The temperature you culture at makes a difference. Yogurt and Kefir grow best at about blood temperature.
If they get too hot they die and if they are too cold they grow too slowly to crowd harmful bacteria out.
With yogurt it is the lactic acid the Lactobacillus acidophilus makes that prevents the growth of harmful bacteria, so you want it to grow at the optimim temperature and sour the milk quickly. Otherwise the milk starts to rot instead of souring.

How old your starter is matters to. As yogurt ages the bacteria use up the milk sugars. If the yogurt is getting too old there might not be enough lactic acid bacteria to get a good start on the fermentation, again allowing other bacteria time to work because they can't produce enough lactic acid the inhibit them quickly.

...........Sorry, I have some interruptions going on here and it will likely be a day before I can get back to you on this topic.

Bought my first bottle of A2 milk and a starter of kefir grains. We get the two together next week. My homemade yoghurt has small grains in it, so I might have just about stumbled onto kefir myself so I'm curious to compare the flavours of the two types.
The difference in A2 and A1 milk is a single amino acid mutation in the casein molecule, but that difference becomes significant when it comes to digesting the casein in a percentage of people.

Anyone else make cheese from their homemade yogurt? I see there are plenty of YT showing how to make labneh (yogurt cheese) which is just like a cream cheese.

OH, hi.
Me again. I almost forgot about this thread.
About the temperature. I just start the culture at the right temperature and let it sit in a relatively warm spot. I am usually making about 4 liters at a time so if I use a 1 gallon or use 4 1 quart jars close together they hold their warmth well enough for a good start. If it is a little cool I might wrap them in a blanket or put them inside one of those camping coolers with a warm waterbottle or two.
Sometimes when the house is cold I use a small electric blanket (heating pad?) to warm the incubating culture, but that is a winter thing.
I sometimes use store-bought yogurt to start my own. You need it to be live culture. Sometimes the stuff sold as "probiotic" is good because it supposedly has a guaranteed active, live, and abundant culture in it.
Still you should let the culture you are using as a starter warm up at least to room temperature before innoculating your new batch of yogurt with it. Doing that will make sure the store-bought culture is ready to start growing quickly.

Making cheese with yogurt is easy if you let it get nice and solid before straining it.
I line a mesh type colander (large strainer) with a cloth and set it over a pot for the whey to drain out. I found out the colanders with the small holes punched in them didn't work as well as the ones that are mesh. The cloth I use to line the colander is like a nylon stocking but not quite as fine meshed. It is like what they make jelly bags out of. You can use cheesecloth or muslin instead if you like. If you fold it over the top you can keep stuff from falling into your cheese as it drains.
Do not try speeding things up by squeezing the yogurt through the cloth. It just does not work and makes a mess.
I have seen people with cloth bags they hang over the sink and I tried that, but I found the bag was in the way and there were always other things I needed to use the sink for.
Also it wasted the whey and I use the whey both as a drink and in cooking.
Another advantage with the strainer over a pot is you can put the whole mess in the refrigerator.
The yogurt cheese comes out very much like cream cheese and can be used in the same ways as you would use cream cheese.

Almost everything I said about Yogurt applies to Kefir too. The Kefir does not make as nice of a cheese in my opinion and it should be slightly fizzy if you stir it to drink it. Kefir has a yeast in it and the yeast produces CO2.
I have had no luck trying to collect kefir grains for culture and just try to keep my culture active and use the kefir as my starter just like yogurt.
Kefir is also slightly alcoholic, but only slightly so you are not going to get drunk on kefir anytime soon.

You mentioned that your yogurt has off flavours. I think you might have some sick or contaminated culture. Yogurt should taste clean.

Which reminds me about cleanliness.
All of your containers should be clean, and preferably sterile. So hot water, detergent, and maybe a touch of bleach when you wash them and follow with air drying.
It is just like you would do if brewing beer. You really do not need to give yourself food poisoning.

Edit: I just thought to mention that once in a while I will buy packaged starter cultures. They come in small foil packages with about a one year shelflife. Buying culture that way seems expensive but it is actually cheaper than buying and trying to grow from store-bought yogurt or kefir.
Once I have my first batch going I go back to using my current batch as starter for my next batch.
I have had cultures that lasted 2 years but I have no hesitation about dumping a culture and starting over again with a new starter if it is getting funky tasting.

I don't mix flavours into the yogurt before fermenting it, but I sometimes will add jams or other flavours when eating it. If you throw some jam into it and blend it you get the same thing as you get in the store flavoured yogurts.
I have one of those electric stick blenders but I can do the same thing wiith a whisk or an egg beater.

Thanks Dan. There was a wealth of information there. The only surprising bit was that you don't get more kefir grains than what you start off with . One YT I watched they seemed to get massive amounts of culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCvDKrHUutE.

Last winter I was making yogurt at room temperature and for some reason it became very alcoholic. I was noticed I was getting quite tiddly just from eating my Weetbix in the morning before work. I looked up alcoholic yogurt and found the Mongolians make kumis from high fat mares milk. They add extra sugar to make their yogurt have more kick.

Kumis is a dairy product similar to kefir, but is produced from a liquid starter culture, in contrast to the solid kefir "grains". Because mare's milk contains more sugars than cow's or goat's milk, when fermented, kumis has a higher, though still mild, alcohol content compared to kefir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis

Cheers.

I probably don't let my kefir ferment long enough for there to be much alcohol or for many grains to form.

Originally Posted by dan hunter

I probably don't let my kefir ferment long enough for there to be much alcohol or for many grains to form.

Have you tried to get others to drink it? There seems to be a real phobia about drinking sour milk type products. Even the so called yogurt my friend gave me nowhere did it say "yogurt" yet it had the probiotics listed on the ingredients. Maybe they had just added the probiotics to a type instant pudding (coagulated milk). There definitely didn't seem to be any lactic acid in it.

People have no problem eating or drinking what I make.
Like I said before, if it does not taste or smell clean, like what you would buy from a store, then you are doing something wrong.
If your yogurt or kefir has anything other than the lactic acid tang, and in kefir some carbonation, then it is likely contamniated with other types of bacteria.
For example Propionibacteria will give it that dirty socks smell like Limburger cheese has.
However not all the bacteria and molds that produce off flavours are as friendly as the ones that give us stinky cheese delicassies.

Read this:
Update: Stonyfield Recalls YoBaby Yogurt Cups for Potential Coliform Contamination | Food Safety News

Other contaminants can be far worse.
So if your yogurt or kefir is smelling like roadkill throw it out, wash and sterilize everything with bleach or boiling, including counter tops, before starting over again.

Originally Posted by dan hunter

People have no problem eating or drinking what I make.
Like I said before, if it does not taste or smell clean, like what you would buy from a store, then you are doing something wrong.
If your yogurt or kefir has anything other than the lactic acid tang, and in kefir some carbonation, then it is likely contamniated with other types of bacteria.
For example Propionibacteria will give it that dirty socks smell like Limburger cheese has.
However not all the bacteria and molds that produce off flavours are as friendly as the ones that give us stinky cheese delicassies.

Read this:
Update: Stonyfield Recalls YoBaby Yogurt Cups for Potential Coliform Contamination | Food Safety News

Other contaminants can be far worse.
So if your yogurt or kefir is smelling like roadkill throw it out, wash and sterilize everything with bleach or boiling, including counter tops, before starting over again.

OK

The strain Propionibacterium freudenreichii subsp. shermanii is used incheesemaking to create CO₂ bubbles that become "eyes", round holes in the cheese.^[7]

OK has the characteristics of your kefir not changed since you started making it? So a few of the YTs emphasized how stable kefir was and the number of probiotic organisms associated with the grains. One YT said there were 42 different yeasts and bacteria all living together. So was that just sheer luck for they emphasize how old kefir is (thousands of years old and passed down from friends etc). It was started long before the concept of living bacteria and sterility was ever thought up, so surely it can't be that sensitive.
OK my home produced variety is a bit smelly (like tasty cheese) and I'm keen to try the grains when they arrive this week to see if real kefir tastes sweeter.
Cheers.

Made and ate my first kefir cheese today. Several others tasted it and liked it. It seemed to be too sticky so it crumbled when cut for it stuck to the knife. Any suggestions on how to make a soft cheese less sticky?

Not feeling that bad after having been on the A2 milk which seems to be higher in fat (3.3 g/100 ml). New study showed "Saturated fat in dairy 'may protect against diabetes'". Saturated fat in dairy 'may protect against diabetes' - Health News - NHS Choices

The bad fats were identified as coming from "diets high in alcohol, soft drinks, margarine and potatoes" foods I don't go for much.

What do you others think about this finding?

Originally Posted by Robittybob1

Not feeling that bad after having been on the A2 milk which seems to be higher in fat (3.3 g/100 ml). New study showed "Saturated fat in dairy 'may protect against diabetes'". Saturated fat in dairy 'may protect against diabetes' - Health News - NHS Choices

The bad fats were identified as coming from "diets high in alcohol, soft drinks, margarine and potatoes" foods I don't go for much.

What do you others think about this finding?

I was telling someone about this study and couldn't remember the foods that formed the bad fat. You wouldn't think there was much fat in alcohol, soft drinks and potatoes, but margarine goes without question.