UKH

Have started making kefir at home and looking for advice from more experienced folk. Each morning when I come to the container I find all the yogurt made overnight along with the “grains” have floated to the top leaving an almost clear liquid below. I think this might be whey and I have been tipping it away because if mixed with the yogurt it just makes it too much and too runny. Does the protein in milk reside in the whey (if that’s what it is) and is there anything useful to do with it? Any advice welcome.

If I remember correctly, milk protein (casein) encapsulates the fat globules, allowing them to stay in suspension. Whey contains the milk sugar (lactose).

Since you can buy whey protein supplements I’d imagined the whey was where the protein was.

There's protein in both the curds and the whey, but when freeze dried the whey powder has a much higher protein content per weight than the curds (and lower fat). Whey is a byproduct of a lot of the cheese making and dairy processing so it's a cheap/ubiquitous source in protein supplements.

There are 5 main proteins in whey of which calcium caseinate is the most significant. (Non freeze dried whey) isn't the most obvious cooking ingredient so not sure what you could do with it other than discard it?

I've been making Kefir for a few years now, do not throw away the liquid! Just sieve out the grains, the solids and liquids together = Kefir. Check out some Kefir instructions online or on YouTube, it's frowned upon to throw away the liquid 'gold'...

You can use it in bread making instead of water. It gives you a sweeter, softer loaf.

That sounds like a good tip. I’m now wondering if it could be used in making soup and sauces. I’m going to experiment.

That’s interesting. It suddenly reminds me that when I was a teenager my mother used to buy something called whey butter, which seemed to me even at that to be a sort of oxymoron. It was a nice substitute for normal butter but with little or no saturated fat.

Ha haa don't mention saturated fats. There's the whole debate whether atherosclerosis (fatty hardening of arteries) is caused by excessive fat in diet (or excessive  production in liver) - and so some fats are "bad"

Or... if it's actually a response to damage/inflammatory issue in the arteries and like a sticky plaster of the body to protect them but it all got excessively out of hand and runaway and so the fat isn't "bad" rather it's a symptom of a very different problem not the underlying cause.

That's a rabbit hole of information and disinformation and assumptions that makes all that awful COVID "debate" look good natured and well informed.

Best avoid mentioning saturated fat in future!!! You'll regret it 

I don't use the grains. I started by adding shop bought Kefir to the milk, using the flask method. Then use some of my homemade stuff to make the next batch, and so on.

This is sounding like a catch up episode of The Archers.

Just part of the joy of UKC