Ask Allie

What is “Ask Allie”?

Ask Allie is our fermenting-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting-related questions and get digestible answers! No question about fermenting is off limits!

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I would like simple thinner culture similar to Yoplait. Suggestions?

— Fred

I have two! If you’re looking to continue on with making yogurt in the thermophilic style, go on ahead and use the American Greek-style culture, which unstrained should be pretty much what you grew up on. Alternatively, if you prefer to go mesophil on this to reduce your work load, check out Bollnäsfil! It’s got a very familiar texture without much bitterness at all!

How many carbs in finished milk kefir?

— Sandy

Unfortunately, there is no right answer here. Most estimates claim 1 gram of sugar per cup (8 fluid ounces) of milk kefir. That said, there are individuals and companies who’ve have gotten different results from their labs. What we don’t know is if there’s a difference in the strains, in the length of fermentation time, and/or other variables I can’t think of right now.

I personally use the 1g/cup figure, but I have no issues with blood sugar regulation. If you do, you would want to discuss it with your doctor first, before consuming milk kefir, and you may also want to send a sample in for testing. I personally wouldn’t send for testing, but it is an option, albeit expensive.

 I'd like to know if I can mix [insert yogurt here] culture with keifer grain culture to see if I can get more bacteria.

— Robert

The short answer is sort of. I have an astonishingly large collection of Frankenyogurts my family enjoys, many of which are also colonized by kefir. Mostly I have so many because I like to do experiments, so sometimes I mix cultures, or I leave them near each other without being sealed to see what happens.

The deal is this: I think it’s unlikely that you’d stick any random mesophil in your kefir and have your kefir’s microbial composition change. I think what will happen if you try is that you’ll get a double-cultured yogurt, where it has been both transformed into the yogurt and cross-colonized by kefir. This will change the texture of the yogurt, though how that may manifest is anyone’s guess. I’ve got an amasi that takes rodeo times to over-ferment, and I’ve got a handful of amasis that are ropey and thick and lovely (all in different ways). So if you keep a sample or three of your double-cultured yogurt, you should see this work just fine in terms of beefing up the yogurt’s probiotic count.

Here’s where it gets murky: what is going to happen with your hybrid yogurt later? In my experience, it will continue on like this forever, where it has some extra microbes from the kefir, and it just keeps on keepin’ on with that. For this reason, you want to make sure you’ve got extra samples of your yogurt put back for just in case you don’t like it. This has happened to me before where I didn’t save and also didn’t like the end result.

Your kefir grains, however, are going to move on with their lives and ferment other milks, presumably without permanent modification from the yogurt they’d bathed in previously. Viili, however, and specifically long viili, will sometimes change the microbial composition of kefir. We know this because the kefired milk in future batches does tend to have textural and sometimes flavor differences that are representative of the viili’s input on the final product.

And now, a twist: I have a colonized Greek yogurt that was spontaneously colonized both by viili and by kefir. It’s got elements of both cultures in its flavor and textural profile, though the roping of the Greek in question is minor (especially compared to viili on its own). I still make that yogurt exactly the same way, where I heat and cool the milk, yada yada. And yet, something from the kefir and viili is still in there. So if you want to try this out with a thermo, you can do so. Again, DO make sure you’re putting back extra spares in the fridge in case you don’t like what happened. I normally culture my Greek when it’s in the 90-100F range, but have cultured it as high as the more standard 110F you do for thermophils.

It should be noted that viili does sometimes colonize kefir, so if you’re going to try it, this is the one to give it a whirl with first. When this happens, people tend to be either really freaked out or really excited - it should be a great day for you!

Please let us know, Robert, what comes of your experiments!