Note – when making anything involving live microorganisms it is important to NOT use metal. Metal utensils, bowls, etc. have a way of killing the organisms.
Yogurt: Boil raw/unpasteurized milk and let cool to [I forget the temperature, just google it. It’s warm enough to foster growth, but cool enough to avoid killing the bacteria] degrees. At this point you’ll need a starter culture. Plain yogurts that specifically say the bacteria they have will work. (Careful, I think Dannon was in a scam not too long ago where they claimed to have live cultures but it was just gelatin or something.) Basically legit yogurt that without flavorings, fruit, etc. Fill a jar about 1/5th full of the starter culture, add your cooled milk. Incubate (i.e. in a cooler, or wrapped up in a blanket, or in a plastic bag surrounded by your jacket, etc.) for about 6 hrs. Too much more than this and it will start to sour. Once this is done, remove from incubation and refrigerate. Be sure to save some of this yogurt to use as your next starter culture
Kefir: Most of you know this in its yogurt form. You can also make it in water, both clear and leftover from boiling vegetables, etc, and there are probably a lot of other ways to make it, too. We focused in milk kefir and water kefir.
Dairy: Take about 1 TBSP Kefir grains, a bit less than a gallon of pasteurized milk, and about a cup of sugar. Mix them all together and wait. When it starts to solidify and look more like yogurt than milk, it’s time to add more milk and a bit more sugar (a few TBSP). Pretty simple. The kefir keeps multiplying as long as you keep adding milk. You can then harvest what you want to eat. If you find that you’re having to add milk every day and it annoys you, you can remove some of the kefir grains which have multiplied by now and start another jar or give them to someone else to start. From start to harvest takes around 2-4 days. Putting the mixture in the fridge slows the process if you’d rather monitor it less.
Water: Same process, but use water instead of milk.
Kombucha Tea: This drink is still effective but gentler than the Effective Microorganism recipe (next), so if you find that the E.M. recipe is so effective at regulating your system that you are spending more time on the toilet than with friends, try Kombucha.
Kombucha is started easiest by getting a mother cell from someone else. Check Craigslist or google your area. Mother cells can multiply easily and people are apparently eager to welcome others into the Fermentation Brotherhood/Sisterhood and will gladly give you one.
Once you have your mother cell, brew some black or green tea (must be caffeinated) w/ 3+ spoonfuls of sugar and cool it. Add the mother cell. Cover the top with cheesecloth and secure with a rubber band. It should be stored in a cool, dark place, so it is helpful to wrap the jar in an old paper bag. Let it sit for 7ish days. You can then harvest some of the liquid. Experiment with how much is helpful to your body. Start with a shot glass sized serving. Take straight, mixed with water, juice, etc. As the liquid gets lower in the jar, add more water and sugar.
If you don’t have a mother cell, you can make your own. Our instructor made hers on accident, so you’ll have to experiment with this suggestion. The main components are fruit, sugar, darkness, and time. When she made the mother cell, it was super hot weather-wise. She mixed some non-citrus fruit, added sugar to the bowl, shoved it under a shelf and forgot about it for a several months. The mother cell formed. It looks like a thick, light brown membrane. You can pick the whole thing up and it shouldn’t tear.
Effective Microorganisms for health:
Start by purchasing non-citrus local fruit. The more local, the better. As in, grown in your backyard, town, or at least for the local farmer’s market. The reasoning—the organisms that grow locally are ones that are suited for fighting off diseases that grow locally. Again you just need ripe fruit and sugar. We used local bananas.
Don’t wash the fruit. Mature, but not rotten to the point of being moldy, fruit is best. Fill a 5 gallon bucket with the fruit. Add about ½ pound sugar on top. Put the lid on, but don’t seal it. You use a lid to keep insects out (instead of a cheesecloth) and keep it dark, but you also want air to be able to circulate. Shove the bucket in a dark corner and let it sit for around 3 weeks.
To harvest, strain off the juice that has formed, bottle it with a narrowed cork (again to let air in and out), and enjoy. Be sure to add more sugar to your existing bucket so that it will continue to create more juice. You can repeat this process until the fruit has entirely dissolved into liquid that you have harvested all along.
E.M. is best drunk right when you wake, about 15 minutes before eating. If the E.M. tastes very strong and makes your stomach burn a bit, like heartburn, drink plenty of water (which you should do anyway). Then next time dilute the E.M. in water when drinking.
Note: mold. During any of these processes, especially for newbies like me, you will see things that look “gross” and smell “gross”. However, as you go along, you’ll learn what is fermentation and what is unhealthy. Mold and large bugs are not okay. In the E.M. process if you should discover those things, use the mixture in your garden instead (more on that when I learn it). In Kombucha, pick a healthy cell without mold on it and start a new culture. In Kefir, find the grains, rinse all the dairy off, and start a new culture. I am not sure about yogurt. Buen provecho!
Update: It’s been a few weeks, so we were able to harvest the juice of the medicinal e.m. mixture. The pictures show us scooping it out, running it through a cheesecloth filter, and bottling it. We then put more sugar on the leftover fruit, covered it with cheesecloth, loosely replaced the lid, and then put it back in its dark corner to await another harvest. Our Kombucha tea isn’t doing so hot. Our mother cell was taken from a mixture that had mold. While we took a healthy-looking cell (one that didn’t have mold), I think it might take a few cycles to produce a tea that doesn’t have any mold on it. The yogurt continues to cycle and we make a new batch about every week with cultures from the previous batch. The kefir is going strong, too. Occasionally you have to replace the kefir grains with fresher ones to keep the fermentation going strong, but so far these grains are doing well.
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