Kefir Debacle

I really don't remember where or when I heard about kefir.  I think it was about half a year or a year ago, but ever since I hear about it I knew that I wanted it.  And, that happened, about 2 months ago.  It’s great; time consuming, but great.  I finally feel as though one of my hands on projects is actually working, being as gardening hasn’t really kicked off for me, yet.  But, seeing these live little jelly bean like buggers grow and prosper gives me a good feeling.  On top of that, they supposedly help out with making me feel good!!! Who’d of thunk?

These kefir grains are a bit of work, though.  Since, I have my grains in a larger, quart-sized container I can let them be for about 3 days before, I think, they’ve used up most of their nutrients.  But, a person can get lazy, and I did, just once (that included a span of a few extra days).  So, how I check if my grains are ready to be moved into a new batch of nutrient rich sugar water is

1. By the amount of days it’s been sitting
2. By the smell

Well, I knew that it was beyond a reasonable time limit of 3 days, but it still smelled good, so I let it go for one more day.  I probably got home late or something, and I didn’t feel like doing anything.  Well, that probably happened for one or two more days.  Then, I finally checked it on the weekend, whew, did it smell bad.  But, I was not going to let this resource go; I didn’t want to throw it all away.  I did all the necessary things: saved the water from the grains, gave them some new nutrient rich water and set them aside.  Now it was the moment of truth, the tasting.  Keep in mind the smell was pretty bad; it had a very yeasty sort of smell to it, a bit like a sour bread starter with something else mixed in.  I did my best to cover it up as much as possible.  I added some grenadine syrup to it, maybe a bit of sweet and sour mix; it was like I was making my own little kefir margarita.  
 

Bottom’s up.  It didn’t taste bad, it was just the smell that got me.  And I knew of most of the bad things that could happen to me if my kefir did go bad: upset stomach, exhaustion, nausea... But I still took that risk, because I made it, dammit!  Well, I got through a quarter of it, and I couldn’t handle it anymore, the smell had just overwhelmed me.  I threw it out.  I was tempted to throw everything out, too.  But, I didn’t.  The next batch was fine, and the batch after that was good, as well.  To lessen my worry about whether or not I should throw the whole thing out, I looked online for some anecdotal experiences and some research about kefir going bad.  What I found was a paper where scientist gave kefir, on purpose, some harmful bacteria to see if it would contaminate the entire process, and it turns out that the kefir’s good bacteria kills off the bad bacteria!! I was very excited when I found this out.  And, to top it off, I did not get any of the symptoms I thought I would get by drinking the bad smelling concoction that I made.

If you make kefir, you should try making your very own kefir margarita:
It’s all to taste, but I add:

• Sweet and sour mix
• simple syrup
• grenadine (only if you’re feeling feisty!)

Some nice information on water kefir.