bernardsmith
Well-Known Member
Not sure if this is best place to post this question but here goes. Sunday evening (5/5/19) I added a couple of tablespoons of kefir grains (that I had dried and had stored in a fridge for a few weeks because they were in excess of the amount of grains I need to make kefir from milk) to 12 oz of molasses (not backstrap) to which I had added enough spring water in which I had boiled Galena hops for about 20 minutes to bring the gravity of the molasses to about 1.050. After a couple of days I have significant krausen and the airlock is bubbling away - not vigorously but clearly pushing out CO2. (not certain if it took two days for the fermentation to take off because of the relatively small size of the yeast colonies involved or because the grains had to re-acclimatize first to a liquid environment after having been dried for storage and then acclimatize to a lactose-free environment for the very first time).
My idea is to try to develop a culture that prefers sucrose to lactose but which still contains a diverse population of different yeast and perhaps bacteria that self select in the presence of hops which I can then use to ferment honey (mead) or malt (beer) . Has anyone tried to brew a molasses "beer" using kefir grains? How dry were you able to ferment the sugars? Milk contains about 20 points of lactose but it is, I think, the bacteria that dominate in making kefir. The lactose becomes lactic acid although perhaps the kefir might hit 0.5 - 1% ABV.
I intend to measure the SG this evening and to taste this "beer" although for this batch I am not looking for a great tasting drink as much as I am trying to encourage a colony of diverse strains of yeast that may or not still be a scoby but which will produce a complex range of flavors. Thoughts? Thanks
My idea is to try to develop a culture that prefers sucrose to lactose but which still contains a diverse population of different yeast and perhaps bacteria that self select in the presence of hops which I can then use to ferment honey (mead) or malt (beer) . Has anyone tried to brew a molasses "beer" using kefir grains? How dry were you able to ferment the sugars? Milk contains about 20 points of lactose but it is, I think, the bacteria that dominate in making kefir. The lactose becomes lactic acid although perhaps the kefir might hit 0.5 - 1% ABV.
I intend to measure the SG this evening and to taste this "beer" although for this batch I am not looking for a great tasting drink as much as I am trying to encourage a colony of diverse strains of yeast that may or not still be a scoby but which will produce a complex range of flavors. Thoughts? Thanks