Ask Allie!

What is 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!

Hi Allie, I love my mesophilic Icelandic skyr! I'm curious about the relationship between this skyr and the type made with rennet. Are they the same cultures just different preparation techniques?

— Lauren

This is an interesting question. They are all the same: the mesophil, the thermo, and the traditional rennet preparation. The long skyr we sell is different, because it has roping microbes. How this works is that the bacteria in the culture do all the heavy lifting if you’re making this as a thermophil. If you’re doing it as a mesophil, it’s the yeast that are primarily involved. This is why they taste the same. With the addition of rennet (which happens when you add the skyr culture), you’re allowing it to form curds per traditional preparations of this culture.

What is a "fil" yogurt culture?

— Virginia

Fil or filmjölk is a Scandinavian term for soured/cultures/fermented milk. It’s a category of Scandinavian and Finnish yogurts that are fermented at room temperature. There’s no direct English translation for it, but is understood to refer collectively to mesophilic dairy cultures from this region.

I’m on about day 7 of activating my Tibetan mushroom Miki kefir grains and they are thickening 1 cup of milk to the consistency of cottage cheese In 24hrs. The smell is very mild. I’m using the kleynhuis nylon strainer bag and find that I can drain off the whey through the bag, however the curds are far too thick to go through the bag and I have to manually sift out the grains, which doesn’t seem to match how the instructions indicate this should work. Am I doing something wrong?

— James

Oh, you’re over-fermenting it. If this happens again, shake the jar before you strain. That will break up a lot of the curds so it’s easier to strain. I also find a spatula is helpful for speeding the process up a bit. 

If it’s overfermenting in 24 hours, it’s time to use more milk, reduce the number of grains, or ferment for shorter times (start w/ 12 hours if you go this route). A teaspoon of grains can ferment a litre in 24 hours once they’re good to go (yours clearly are), so I personally would put the first 2 extra teaspoons in the freezer for backups and bump the milk. If I were better at paying attention to times, I’d really just reduce the time. You also can ferment in the fridge, which takes 1-2 weeks.

 I have some goat milk yogurt but no goat milk. What would happen if I just put the yogurt in the machine.? Will it just ferment more? That sounds silly but I'd like to have it super fermented.

— Lisa

Make sure you save some in the freezer so you’ve got backups just in case, but yes. You can ferment it as long as you want. There are some Middle Eastern traditions of fermenting yogurts for up to a week (though I don’t know if it’s with goat’s milk). I’d check every 6-12 hours so you catch it at the level of tartness you’re looking for.

Hi Allie. Long ago, I made dairy kefir for about 4 years and it helped restore my biome, but I stopped when I noticed my kefir grains had turned pink (and the kefir they made had pink across its surface). It was the same pink that I scrub out of the shower tiles. I looked up "pink fungus" and concluded that, probably, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa had contaminated my grains from being in the air. Questions: 1. Is there such a thing as heirloom vs non-heirloom kefir grains? I wonder if my grains weren't an heirloom strain, so maybe they just got weak; 2. You say that kefir can be an anaerobic process, so if I try again, can I just close the jars with airtight lids this time and maybe that'll reduce the chances of contamination from pink microbes?

— Anonymous

That study was also really interesting; I had no idea that R. mucilaginosa had any protective effects in smaller amounts. That said, yes I would’ve tossed those grains immediately. Pink mold and fuzzy mold get an immediate toss from me!

There is not a difference. If the kefir is in grain form, it’s always going to be heirloom, and should last (and/or its descendants) for generation after generation of humans. That said, I always grow enough mkg to put back 2 teaspoons, minimum, in case something like mold or dropping a glass jar happens. Has happened to me twice. I package different types separately but store in the same container in the freezer; same type I put in the same packaging. For me, “packaging” here means that I tossed the grains (or whatever) in a breast milk bag and then stored it in the milk kefir section of my freezer. We always say these frozen cultures should be used at least once per year, but in reality my haphazard ways have taught me that freezer storage longer than a year generally works out just fine.

Non-heirloom kefir is going to be the powdered packets some companies sell. My understanding is that you can usually get 2-3 recultures’ worth out of them, but then it’s not viable. In gardening, “heirloom” means that selective breeding stopped at a certain point and people just saved seeds without altering the fruit’s characteristics further, but in fermenting it means it can be used again and again indefinitely if it’s taken care of (and sometimes even when it isn’t). So for things like milk kefir, heirloom here means effectively the same as what it means with furniture or whatever other more permanent objects we transmit generationally. 

You can absolutely always do aerobic fermentation with milk kefir, though I honestly can’t see why anyone would. Anaerobic does dramatically reduce the likelihood of mold of any kind, prevents cross-contamination in situations where that’s relevant (it’s relevant if you have more than 1 culture, in most instances), and I don’t think I have had a single culture do either since I stopped doing aerobic fermentation on all but my vinegar. For me, preventing gnats and fruit flies is always my principal concern, and in those cases anaerobic is also going to be best. Airtight lid is fine, and so are fermenting jars. I mostly use a mason jar with the plastic lid for milk kefir, but I think Sabrina uses either Fido or Weck. If you go aerobic, make sure to use some muslin or a coffee filter to keep bugs, dust, and debris out.