Cultures For Health Milk Kefir Grains

I live in a hot climate area and I leave the kefir in a glass container in a shady area in my kitchen and I have kefir within less than 12 hours and I can add less milk so it becomes yoghurt :) I love it !!

الكمية قليلة وناشفة جدا مما يتطلب عدة مرات لتنشيطها بعد 10 ايام من محاولة تنشيط الفطر(granula) بقيت جافةوهذا دليل على موتها وعدم فعاليتها علما بأنني عملت بها قبل عدة سنوات ولدي الخبرة الكافية للتعامل معها وللأسف بعد هذه المدة لا بمكنك ارجاع المنتج او استبداله

Great product, clear instructions, a fair price, patience is needed, I'm five batches in, all excl. batch #1 are tasty and healthy! Admittedly the grains haven't grown massively (I'm using full fat milk from Spinnies but it's homogenized and pasteurised, so still workable but not the best), 24hrs is enough (in our hot heat) now they're activated. All in all, after lots of research, this was the best option on paper. And it's proving to be the same in reality!

Really good product. The kefir took three days to activate. Don't get disheartened and throw them away before they activate. Throw away the first lots of milk and increase the milk quantity exactly as per the instructions. I use whole, long life, full fat milk and it works great. A friend gave me some of their known high quality Kefir to compare and I cannot tell the difference, so this seller is legit and the kefir tastes great. The kefir has multiplied and increased in size so much that I have had to give a lot to friends.

Waste of money, i have been putting then in milk as instructed for almost 4 days and the milk never turn thick. Not recommended at all

It’s been a month now and I do everything to keep my kefir alive and they are. But they don’t grow in size at all! Which is disappointing.

Very good product. Exactly as expected

Thanks 'Cultures for Health' for providing Milk Kefir Grains. I have been using them to make my Milk Kefir from few months now.

These kefir grains did not produce viable kefir. The instructions said to place the dehydrated kefir grains in a 1/2 cup of milk, wait for 24 hrs (or until thickened), and increase the milk by a 1/2 cup if the milk thickens. If it doesn't thicken, it states to simply replace it with a 1/2 cup of milk. It also said that you should be able to increase the milk up to 4 cups within 3 to 7 days. This is an incredibly simple process, however, I have been progressively attempting to revive my grains and produce kefir for about a month. I finally decided to compost them because I realized I could find some for much cheaper from a local person and I was wasting a lot of money on milk that was just getting funky tasting and off. Now, here's the thing with fermentation. Microbes ferment food, not people. Yes, you want to make sure you aren't applying heat to your grains (this will kill them). Moreover, you want to stay on top of feeding them. Other than that, there isn't really anything else that should get in the way of producing good kefir at home. Thus, I blame the grains. They definitely weren't dead. The milk was bubbling, just not souring or thickening. I tested the PH to determine if there was a change and there never was. I would have expected some change within a month of trying. Getting live grains from someone local made a lot more sense in the long run and I recommend that people go that route rather than buying dehydrated grains online. There are so many poor reviews for this product that I really should have known better than to order it. I have attempted to contact the seller for a refund, however, I haven't received a response.

First time in doing milk kefir. I was hesitant because i see a lot starting on activated and this one is dehydrated and i was not sure if I'll be successful. I followed the instructional video. I used whole milk 3.8% 1 cup used coffee filter to cover the glass. I only used plastic to stir and left it for 24 hrs. On the 2nd day i transferred to new glass with same amount of milk. After every 8 hrs i shaked the glass a bit. Before 24 hrs it was starting to get thicker So 3rd day i used 1 1/2cups of new milk. It got so thicker. So today i used 2 cups. I guess i could say it is a success activating the milk kefir grain. Now i can make my own milk kefir at home. Thanks a lot.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: I didn't want to order fresh grains in the midst of summer, so I went with dehydrated. I read reviews and watched videos so I knew to expect a small but mighty volume of grains and the need for patience. The heat dome came just after I ordered so I wasn't sure I'd be successful due to hot conditions during shipping. The first day I added a cup of milk - no change after 24 hours. The second day I drained and added another cup of milk - nothing. The third day - slightly thicker so I drained and added 1.5 cups of milk. Today on day four, I came home and it worked so fast the curds separated from the whey. I don't have air conditioning, so I'm sure the heat helped speed things up. I drained the grains and noticed the kefir was a little grainy - but supposedly that is normal during reactivation (thanks LLM). The kefir smelled great, like yogurt, so I drank it in a smoothie. I am still alive (first time fermenting anything so a bit wary of my lack of skills) and am culturing 2 C of milk for tomorrow. I skipped the whole cloth and rubber band shenanigans and just put a loose plastic cap on as it is easier to clean, which seems to be working so far.

- Quantity of product received: it was less than a teaspoon with what seems to be dry powdered milk mixed with a few dark yellowed kefir grains smaller than peppercorns. This makes the grains quite hard to locate and fish out of the curdling milk. ***The grains do get a little bigger once rehydrated and activated, I ensure to shake the kefir well before straining to get only the grains and not the milk curds for the next batch.*** Now 2 weeks after activation: I have now 16 grams of hydrated kefir grains (about a full tablespoon). - The paper instructions provided with the starter are straightforward enough, I changed my milk every 12 hours schedule. I used a seedling mat to keep my kefir warm and about the same temperature throughout the process because the weather is still quite cold in my region. - The grains are working fine after they have been activated on the 7th batch, aka, there's a change in texture, milk gets into a jelly-like substance and makes some whey "cracks" in the milk. Once the kefir is ready, it is quite sour, so no issue there.*** - The barn odor that came from the grains seems to be less and less present, hopefully it will dissipate with more batches under the grains' belt *** 2 weeks after activation, the odor is almost gone unless the kefir is really overfermented (i.e.: curds and whey are separated into very distinct 2 layers). 2 weeks after activation: All and all, it's an ok product, it works well if you follow the instructions, but unfortunately, not quite what I expected... My partner never smelled or tasted the "barn/goat" in the kefir, probably because it was sweetned and masked the taste/smell for him. So if you like the grains (or not), it is really a matter of taste and how you consume the kefir-milk post-production.

Disappointed. I very, very rarely write reviews and even more rarely write a bad one. I have purchased this product 3 times over the years. The previous 2 times the kefir grains made lovely, creamy, fresh-tasting kefir. The only reason I had to replace my previous set of kefir grains was because I had been traveling for longer than I had planned and so they were in hibernation in my refrigerator for too long. However, there was something very, very wrong with the most recent set of kefir grains that I purchased from Cultures for Health. Something is not quite right with this batch. I meticulously followed the Cultures for Health steps as indicated in their videos online. I used ultra-clean vessels (used to work in scientific research and know well what clean glassware is), purchased new organic whole milk, kept the vessels in the suggested temperature range, kept a daily log, etc.. The taste of this kefir is off, not just sour, but bad. Since I began drinking this kefir, I've had extreme fatigue. Needless to say, I've dumped a bunch of kefir down the drain. I honestly think this product may be a health hazard, and would like to know what standards and INDEPENDENT LABORATORY checks are done to check the microorganisms/bacteriophages that are in these grains. The care that went into "awakening" these kefir grains from their dehydrated state was considerable. It was not an inexpensive purchase for what amounted to be perhaps a half teaspoon of kefir grains. These along with thequantity of milk I needed to purchase to get the kefir grains out of their freeze-dried state was also considerable. This product is unpredictable, and quite possibly a health threat. A 66% success rate depicting my experience with this product purchased three times is not acceptable. Would you trust your child with a swim instructor who boasted a 66% success? I'll keep drinking kefir, but I will be buying STANDARDIZED bottles of it from Whole Foods.