This Refreshing Kefir is Very Yummy Indeed!

I used to have a cow. Now I have goats. I make butter every day with goats milk kefir. No cream separator is needed. I churn whole goats kefir. It takes up to three hours but it is worth it. Raw goat butter made from kefir is fabulous. Some of my goats are Nigerian Dwarfs which have a very high butterfat so I can get up to 1 1/2 pounds of butter from three gallons of kefir.

You can get bad tasting goat milk even if you don't have a buck around. Producing sweet, delicious goat milk that has a shelf life of 7-10 days without turning goaty has to do with cleanliness, quick cooling, and the health of the goat. Getting enough of the minerals copper and cobalt into them makes for exceptionally good tasting goat milk.

This is not important and means nothing, but I have had cows and goats...concerning harm from hooves, I've been stepped on by cows, horses and goats and those sharp little goat hooves hurt the worst!  And that 'sloppy, smelly excrement' was great for fertilizing the fields. I did teach a goat to shake 'hands', but cows make better 'friends' as I had no humans (we lived in the sticks) with whom to play.  I loved both my cows and goats. Nice to learn about making butter from goats milk kefir.  That's a new one for me.  Our Nubians gave lots of rich tasty milk.  We had two goats that gave a gallon a milking (that's two gallons a day!).  No one believed us when we moved to this area, thought we were deluded or lying.  We fed them really well to get that kind of production. (And keep them out of the wild onions!) Sorry for the side-light that contributed nothing.  I just had to stick up for my Guernseys!

I raised Saanen goats when my children were little. They were lovely, sweet tempered animals, but gave a LOT of milk - my prize milker (who was the size of a small pony) gave 2 gallons a day! This is not typical, as most goats will only give up to a gallon a day. We made cheese, yougurt, and the kids drank tons of fresh, sweet, raw milk. Out of 4 children, only one has had a minor cavity from a space in her molar that did not close properly when the tooth was developing. Of course we did not feed our children soda pop, either, so that was also a factor, I'm sure.

Since goats are herd animals and need a goat buddy, having 2 can produce way more than we can handle now that the children are all grown. So... we just bought 2 very sweet Nigerian Goat doelings - 3 months old. They will produce just enough for us to have fresh milk, cheese, yogurt and KEFIR! Important: be sure to get well bred animals from dairy bloodlines, so they will be most likely to be good milkers when they grow up. A bad milker with horrible teats is just as expensive to feed and raise as a good one, though you may pay more for a good one to begin with.

Grow up is a relative term, as they will only be about 20-22 inches tall at the shoulder when they are full grown. About the same size as my small Australian Shepherd. We are walking them on leashes, and I take them around the property when I am doing chores, so they are getting very familiar with following me and coming when I call - I am the herd boss!

DO NOT get goats until you do some serious research, go to the local county fairs, meet and talk to some nice goat folks who raise them professionally, and prepare your property before you come home with your girls. I say girls, because you do not need a buck unless you are a big time goat operation. You can always take your girls to a reputable breeder when the need arises. They DO need to be bred and have babies to start giving milk...heheh.

It's not like getting a dog - it IS animal husbandry.

I make a lot of kefir to carry me over while our cows are dry in the late winter and have drunk it when it is two months old.  It is still good!  I'm not sure what the limits are.  Do keep it refrigerated.  If you don't, it will separate into curds and whey.  If that happens, strain the curds in butter muslin for a day or two (in the fridge), and then you have a marvelous cream cheese.  I like to roll the cheese into walnut sized balls, roll in dried herbs, then put in a jar with garlic cloves and cover all with organic olive oil.  After it has marinated for a bit, then you take out one of the cheese balls and mash it on some good crusty bread, like a ciabatta, and it is heaven!  

I got my Kefir grains from a worker at the natural foods cooperative here in Vermont.  They didn't cost me a dime.  They are pretty quick reproducers and you ought to be able to get some for free, or the cost of shipping, from anyone. Goat's milk in my opinion is far superior to cow's milk when it comes to making Kefir.  Yum, yum.  I've just dried off my does for the winter and will need to rely on the cow's milk but there are worse things in life.  I'd take a sharp goat hoof over a half-ton cow hoof any day.  Kefir rules!  

Here in Vermont it takes more than half a day usually to get some nice thick Kefir.  I sewed grains into a netting bag so I could just hook it up and plop it into the next batch without straining or into the water for a break in the fridge for a few days before Kefiring the next batch.  Kefir definately rules!  Also, it certainly must be the cleanliness of milking equipment/storage containers that keeps the goaty taste at bay since I have four bucks in my barn this year, up from last year, and no goaty taste to the milk.  Last year I did.  I have changed some of my ways and it has paid off.

Ronit, Just to set the record straight, letting RAW milk ferment at room temperature without adding any culturing agent to it results in a "product" known as "clabbered milk" or just "clabber." Clabber has a pleasantly sour taste that many people like, and it separates into two components: the whey (a clearish light yellow liquid that is quite acidic) and the curds (a white, soft cheese-like solid that contains the butterfat and milk proteins). The naturally occurring strains of lactobaccilus bacteria in raw milk that is healthy and clean (that is, from 100% grassfed cows) are the organisms responsible for the souring or "clabbering" process.

Just so anyone not familiar with "how milk works" doesn't make a rather serious mistake, you CANNOT make clabber from PASTEURIZED milk. If you let pasteurized milk sit out at room temperature for several hours (or more), it will start to rot (putrefy) and it will smell absolutely horrible. If you drank pasteurized milk that has putrefied, it will make you VERY sick. For more information about clabber (soured raw milk) and all of its uses in recipes and in creating other fermented foods, see the book "Nourishing Traditions," by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, PhD. Kefir is the result of adding a culturing agent, either a kefir "starter" powder, or actual kefir grains to raw milk. Note that a kefir culturing agent may be added to pasteurized milk, but the process of making the kefir with pasteurized milk is different. See Dom's kefir-making web site for more information: users.chariot.net.au/.../kefirpage.html

I would think that the milk was pasteurize before they turned it into "kefir". I agree with Dom that it's not really kefir, unless it is made with real kefir grains. What you make at home with real kefir grains is superior to anything you can buy at the store. Direct set starter, which is what Luci is using in this video has only 7 or so strains of bacteria in it. There are no yeasts in "kefir" starter. Compare that to real kefir grains which have up to 30 strains of bacteria and yeast including some that directly combat candida albicans. I've even made something resembling kefir by opening probiotic capsules from the health food store and stirring into milk and letting it culture for a day or so. It's all good, but that wasn't kefir. And neither is direct set "kefir" starter. I'd like to emphasize it is all good.