Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our advice column, where you can ask all your food-related questions to get digestible answers! No question is off limits!
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Hi. I bought a bunch of your cultures in March of this year. Since I am moving I decided to wait until after the move to start them. I just took them out and saw they were supposed to be frozen? They didn't come frozen and I never read anything about it .. just glanced that I had them all. Are they ruined now?
— Lise
We don’t ship them frozen, because they can handle some time at room temp. It’s likely that your cultures are still fine, but you won’t really know until you try them out (give them 3 batches if dairy, and stay the course for at least a week if sourdough). Generally, though, these are fine in the short period we’re talking about for your situation, so long as you haven’t stored them in hot spaces like cabinets next to your stove. Tuck them in the freezer until you’re ready to get to them.
Hello I was wondering the starters for the heirloom yogurts are they supposed to dissolve completely when they get activated or are the granules left intact because I was gifted some and they didn't dissolve so I wasn't 100% sure thank you.
— Luis
No, they don’t dissolve the way we want them to. Within 3-5 batches (usually 3, but I’ve seen up to 5), they should disappear. Not dissolving doesn’t hurt or weaken the yogurt you’re making at all, and it will still culture properly, but it definitely feels weird and a little bit “did I do something wrong?” to me even years into activating new cultures from dried yogurt this way.
Your activation instruction on the mesophilic yogurt activation page are confusing. In the activation and regular batch sections it says to use a breathable cover while fermenting (as I have always done). In the tips section you say that mesophilic cultures do not need oxygen and a lid is fine (goes against everything I have previously heard). Which is it?
— Kerry
It’s both. Dairy cultures are anaerobic, so they require no oxygen access in order to ferment. The overwhelming majority of ferments people eat work that way, with kombucha/jun and vinegar as the notable exceptions to that, plus of course certain stages of producing alcoholic beverages. If you prefer to use a breathable cover while fermenting, you can do that, but if you prefer a lid you can also do that. If you are fermenting multiple types of yogurt, using a lid is the better option because it reduces the likelihood of spontaneous cross-contamination with your other yogurts. Also, homes that do a lot of fermenting can also see a lot of problems with gnats, and lids help prevent that. Our post on types of fermentation might be helpful for you in terms of understanding why the activation instructions offer contradictory options for how to cover your cultures.
