Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our food-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!
Most of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog, since I frequently think you need a more immediate answer. You should anticipate 1-2 weeks between submitting your question and its appearance on blog. Although emailed replies normally take between 1-3 days, it can take up to a week.
To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.
For troubleshooting active issues with a culture you’re working with, please check the FAQs or write us at support@positivelyprobiotic.com - you’ll get your answer faster that way! Please also take advantage of our Facebook group for troubleshooting, conversation, and getting to know more members of our community!
I've been enjoying the various yogurt cultures and appreciate all the help y'all have provided. I was wondering if you have a culture, water kefir or kombucha that ends up with a bit of alcohol? I hope you're having a great day.
— Emory
If you are Muslim, a recovering alcoholic, or otherwise sensitive to alcohol, you should not consume either kombucha or water kefir. I know this because a number of recovering alcoholics have told me that kombucha can trigger a relapse for them, and one friend in this situation asked me to send her water kefir grains so she could try that. She ended up having to get them out of the house, because as mildly alcoholic as water kefir is, it was triggering a relapse for her. Other people recovering from alcoholism have been able to do water kefir so long as they keep the fermentation super short and do not do a second ferment. Fruit ferments also can be an issue.
All fermented foods do have some alcohol in them, but those two are the problem ones for anyone who needs to avoid alcohol as much as possible. Milk kefir, sourdough, vegetable ferments (usually) and yogurts seem to be consistently fine in my observations, and ditto other types of ferments we don’t sell like natto, tempeh, tofu, etc.
If you’re actually looking TO produce alcohol, I would choose kombucha first, fruit ferments second (these just take longer than kombucha but will net substantially higher ABVs if you’re doing it right), and water kefir second. With kombucha, you need to catch it at the right point, as I understand it (I can’t stand kombucha so can’t speak to this from experience), if you want booze and not alcohol. I personally would fuel making some kind of kombucha booze by feeding the tea sugar weekly but NOT making new batches or adding tea. Literally I would just feed it sugar so the microbes present can continue increasing ABV until it’s where you want it. Fruit booze I do as mead, with honey, but you can do it with sugar and most other natural sugar sources. Water kefir would be done similarly to kombucha, but it would take longer to get a proper ABV and would definitely taste winey. When we DO get a boozy batch of water kefir (due exclusively to my negligent ways), it always tastes like wine.
I have a culture I bought from you. The instructions say to get activation instructions here. Where are they? Can you email them to me?
— A lot of you
I’ve modified one of the many emails about this so it includes all cultures instead of the one asked for in this email (sourdough). All activation instructions can be found on the hyperlink that says “Activating the Culture,” which will take you to the list of activation pages for you to pick the one you need. My understanding is that some of you struggle to access that specific link from your phones, and in your case you would go to the menu on the top right, click on it, click on “Learn.” From mobile devices, this will give you a link to get to the activation pages. From a computer, the link for activating cultures is above the index bar.
I recently ordered your three culture pack on Amazon. I am just activating the first one. I am trying the American Greek, Dahi and Buttermilk cultures. I have made yogurt before but I am no expert. I generally use an instant pot. I eat yogurt regularly but I am not sure I can make and use three kinds weekly to keep the culture viable. I was wondering if I can freeze starter and if so how long you can store it and have it stay viable.
— Amanda
Yes, you absolutely can freeze these cultures, and we prefer you do so if you’re not ready to use them! Industry standard (how long we guarantee them) is that they’ll remain viable for a year if frozen. In my personal experience (and everyone else’s I know), they remain viable for quite a lot longer. If you’ll also visit our blog, we have a post about how to save backups of cultures. PLEASE make sure that as each culture is activated and acting properly (many yogurts get jet lag and really do need 3 batches to properly thicken up), you do save some as a backup. Sometimes things go wrong and we damage our cultures or eat them all without saving enough for the next batch, so you always want to plan for the possibility that you’ll need a backup.
