 Greetings friends! This is Survival Doc. Today we're going to talk about making my favorite fermented beverage and that is Kefir. Now Kefir is so much easier to make than yogurt. With yogurt you have to heat the milk up to 110 degrees and you've got to keep it at that temperature throughout the process. With Kefir you don't have to do that. You can make it at room temperature. Basically what you do is you just take your milk, you add the Kefir starter which are the Kefir granules, you let it sit on your countertop and what I do is I cover it with a band with a cloth like a handkerchief just so we can get air to it and so any pressure that builds up can be released. Alright but you just leave it on your countertop as long as you want to leave it. You can check it along the way to see it gets stronger and longer you leave it there. The temperature has something to do with it. The warmer it is, the faster it will ferment. But typically in a day or a couple of days if it's fairly cool, maybe three or four days even if it's really cool and you want some strong Kefir. Alright I always start with raw milk. The Kefir I make right now I'm using with raw goat's milk because goat's milk is available right now. I buy it from a local farmer and by the way on the subject of raw milk is opposed to pasteurized milk. If you can ever get raw whole milk that is the milk whether it's cow's milk or goat's milk always get raw milk. It is much healthier for you than the pasteurized junk. It is much safer for you. The raw milk contains beneficial bacteria itself. It won't go bad. Raw milk won't go bad. You can just leave it out on your countertop. It'll turn into yogurt. It'll turn into kefir. It'll turn into some kind of fermented product because it already contains the good bacteria. You try that with pasteurized milk and it's gonna go sour. It's gonna go bad. This whole thing about having the pasteurized milk it's just a bunch of bunk. That is a result of the lobbying of the dairy industry because the practices of the large dairy practices, the large dairy factories, their practices were so unclean that their milk had to be pasteurized just to kill all the bad bacteria that gets in it due to their their factory run process. Alright so then the dairy products, the dairy companies knew that they could not compete with raw milk. So their solution was to require raw milk producers to pasteurize their product so that they would be on equal footing with the large dairy producers. But anyway I'll start with raw milk, raw cow's milk, raw goat's milk. Today I'm gonna be using raw goat's milk. I buy it in half gallon jars. All I do is just add the granules, let it sit on my countertop, becomes kefir, then I strain it, remove the granules, save them for the next time, and then I enjoy the kefir. Now you can sweeten it if you want to. I just drink it straight. I like it straight. You can sometimes I'll pour it over a fruit, sliced bananas or something like that. But usually I'll just drink it straight. Now kefir contains very, very, very beneficial bacteria, more so than yogurt. The primary bacteria in kefir is L-ruderi or Lactobacillus ruderi, which is far more healthier for you than the primary bacteria of yogurt, which is Lactobacillus acidophilus and others. But so for that reason, kefir is much healthier for you. And these fermented products, what they do is they help establish the beneficial bacteria in your intestinal tract, which is so important. And what we're learning, what we've learned over the years, and we're learning more and more, is just how important to your health it is to have a healthy biological mix of beneficial bacteria in your intestinal tract. Okay. Here, basically I bought I buy half a gallon of ghost milk. All right, this kefir is done here. If you'll notice it, there is some separation between the whey and the kefir. And what I'll do when I get ready to use this is I'll just shake it up real good to mix this all together. And then it stays in the refrigerator. It stays all mixed together. Then I'll pour this through a sieve in order to remove the granules to use next time. And then I just drink this product here. I take the granules and I put them in a little jar of just milk. In this case, raw ghost milk again. And then I just keep this in the refrigerator like this until the next time I need it. But the raw milk will keep the granules alive. And you can also take this and put this in your freezer and freeze it. What happens over time is your granules will grow, they'll get larger and larger very slowly over time. All right. And what you can do at some point is you can divide your granules. And when you do share them with a friend so that they can make kefir too, or take some of your granules, put them in a jar, make sure it's a freezer safe jar, which this is not. But in a freezer safe jar with some milk, let it freeze in your freezer, and then you'll always have some granules to fall back on. This is the sieve that I use to remove the granules from the kefir. This is found to be just the right size to allow the kefir to go through. The kefir is kind of thick. You don't want to use a sieve that's too fine. But this will save your granules. I'm going to demonstrate that now. Okay, I'm working with a half gallon of kefir here. All right. So I want to strain it into a container. This is an eight cup measuring cup. Here's my strainer fits there perfectly. All right, here's my container of milk. I'm going to put the granules in here. All right, as you can see here, what I simply have is a canning band holding on a handkerchief. Alright, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to shake this up. And by the way, if you leave your kefir too long, what you end up with is a product on top that is that is a type of cheese. And it's also delicious. I'm going to shake this up real good. There we go. Actually, let this one go longer than what I usually does. You do usually this shakes up a lot easier than this. It mixes up a lot easier. But I let this go a long time. And so really, it's a real thick on the top. And what I have is a product that's kind of like a cheese. The good thing about these making these fermented products like this is they just don't go bad. You know, they'll just turn into something else. So I got a big chunk here. Usually, I do not have a big chunk here. But apparently, I'm going to be dealing with something like cheese. Okay, the clear liquid is way. Alright, then what I do is I just shake this through here. Till I get my granules out. Okay, again, what ended up with this time was cheese and not really kefir. This right here is kefir drink this just like this. This right here is a cheese more more of a cheese product. And problem with doing this is it makes it a little harder to find your granules. So I'll leave this this is up ends up being something like a like a a Feta type cheese. I'll put this on my salads or or whatnot. Actually, I can't find the granules in here. And maybe that's a good reason to have the the spare starter. I believe I've done this before though. And I believe what happened is when I was using my cheese that ended up I did end up finding the granules in here. The difference between the granules is the granules are kind of a gelatin consistency kind of a jelly jelly type mass. Okay, well, I'm not going to find my granules in there right now. Ordinarily when I make this and I'll make another video showing the process when I don't let it go so far. Ordinarily what I do is I shake this through and everything goes through except the granules. I end up with nice kefir right here. Alright, this is nice key for here is just contains more way. And which is the semi clear liquid. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this is pour it back in the jar. Oh without hopefully without wasting so much of it. And I'll drink this. This is a very, very healthy drink. This is very good kefir. It's just a little bit thinner. Because a lot of my milk product turned into this cheese. I'll put this in another jar. And I'll use this cheese on my salads and whatnot. So it's going to show you here how to make kefir basically went over the whole process. Unfortunately, this kefir was not exact didn't turn out exactly the way that I had planned. And so what I ended up with is cheese, cheese and kefir. But I'll make another video next batch I'll make I'll stop a little bit sooner. This has been sitting here for several days. And actually, we've been having some real cool temperatures. It's been taken several days to make kefir. And what happened over the last week is we have some increase in temperatures has been a lot warmer. And so my kefir made a lot quicker. And my key was when I started seeing that separating like that, that at that point, I should have stopped it, shaken it up and strained it out to get my granules. When you get your granules out, you just put them in a jar of milk, put them in the refrigerator or freezer, and you're ready to go for the next time. In the meantime, enjoy drinking your kefir. Okay, in my promise to show you how to make kefir. After all, this is not a video about making goat cheese. I fished out some of the granules in that cheese. And I used them with some fresh raw goats milk to make kefir. It's been sitting on my countertop for a couple of days. As you can see, there's the separation of the whey and the other dairy products in here, which is usual when you're making kefir. So what I'll do first of all, shake that up. Okay, here I have this time a one liter or one quart measuring cup, my usual strainer that I use to remove kefir granules, because this is a smaller container. I'll shake this up to make this liquefied as much as possible. Ooh, a little pressure. Then I'll pour this into the strainer. This is what you typically come up with. I'll shake the kefir through. And what I have left is the granules. Let me get a close up of that. These are the granules. They're different from the other material that strain through. All right. In that they're kind of a jelly type mass. So I'll save these. And this is my starter to use next time. And here I have my finished kefir the way it should be. And it is some kind of good. This is perfect kefir the way that I like it. Now so don't confuse my kefir with milk. I typically will write a K on the lead for kefir M for milk. Here's the milk where I store my granules. So what I'll do is I'll just add my granules this milk, put this in the refrigerator or freezer. If you freeze it, you don't want to fill this too full because milk like water expands when it's frozen. So if you feel it's about half full, it'll freeze without busting the jar or you can use a regular freezing jar, which is like tapered rather than have a shoulder. It is tapered. Anyway, so to make kefir next time, all I have to do is just get me some more milk, add the granules to the milk, let it sit on the countertop, and it becomes kefir. So easy to make much easier than yogurt or anything else that I've made. This is survival back reminding you be prepared or be prepared to be pleased.