Raw Milk

It is extremely dangerous to use store bought raw milk, particularly for children. Unless you milked the cow yourself this morning, don't drink raw milk. How quickly we forget the lessons of thousands of years of dairy farming. If you need to keep raw milk for more than 24hours, then it needs to be fermented for use in butter and cheese making or for yogurt, kefir etc. Raw milk will self ferment into yogurt if left in a cool dark place because raw milk already contains the appropriate probiotics. There is no need for starter cultures or grains. The whole purpose of fermented milk (yogurt, kefir, leben etc) was as a means of preserving raw milk for more than a day prior to the invention of pasteurisation.

As to the type of milk to use, I've been using pasteurised skim for years now and my grains keep growing healthily. In fact I've recently switched to powdered skim for convenience and cost saving. It works just as well. The only thing that matters is that the milk contains lactose which they all do except for coconut and soy milk. I like skim because I drink about a litre a day and would get extremely fat if I used full fat milk. Also, making full fat kefir leaves a fatty film on the utensils requiring cleaning in hot soapy water whereas with skim kefir, the utensils can be simply rinsed in cold water. It's more environmentally friendly if that's your thing. My thing is simply, less work. Anyway, milk fat seems to play no part in the fermentation but I do not dispute that it does make a more creamier kefir.

As far I can see, there is no benefit at all in using organic milk. You are simply paying more money to ensure that the miniscule traces of pesticide in your milk is a little less miniscule. Save the money and spend it on your kids. Tweet