WHERE to buy kefir grains?

[Henrietta23]

I know it's probably on here somewhere already, but you've all become a bunch of fermenting fanatics that it's buried!!!
Where do you buy your grains. I want to try making kefir but I'm clueless where to get some. Thanks!

 

[big brown horse]

THANK YOU!! I want to know too, I can't find them on cl or at the health food chain.

 

[Henrietta23]

Even our food co-op doesn't have them. It's exactly the kind of place you'd think you could find them but nope.

 

[freemotion]

About the only place to get them is from another fermenting fanatic. There are kefir-share websites with lists of people all over the world willing to share, and there are people here willing to share.....once our grains grow enough for sharing, that is. Crestacresgirl over on BYH will send them free to members of byh, but she tried to get them to me three times and only one made it, damp and stinky, two weeks after her postmark! So we gave up. She is in CA, so it might work better for someone on that coast.

Henrietta, you are closer to me, if you don't mind waiting a while, (I already have a short waiting list) we can probably meet somewhere. Or I can send them from a CT post office and you'll get them quick enough to survive the USPS, maybe.

Google kefir and share and grains, etc and see what you can find in your area first, there might be someone practically next door to you. Or put an ad on craigslist. Or find the local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation, someone there will know someone with grains to share.

Kefir grains and kombucha mushrooms can be purchased, but there is also a culture (pun intended! ) of sharing, too.....receive free, give free. We can use this thread to keep track, if you don't find any, and you can get some from those of us who now have them growing!

 

[big brown horse]

Great advice free!

 

[Henrietta23]

About the only place to get them is from another fermenting fanatic. There are kefir-share websites with lists of people all over the world willing to share, and there are people here willing to share.....once our grains grow enough for sharing, that is. Crestacresgirl over on BYH will send them free to members of byh, but she tried to get them to me three times and only one made it, damp and stinky, two weeks after her postmark! So we gave up. She is in CA, so it might work better for someone on that coast.

Henrietta, you are closer to me, if you don't mind waiting a while, (I already have a short waiting list) we can probably meet somewhere. Or I can send them from a CT post office and you'll get them quick enough to survive the USPS, maybe.

Google kefir and share and grains, etc and see what you can find in your area first, there might be someone practically next door to you. Or put an ad on craigslist. Or find the local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation, someone there will know someone with grains to share.

Kefir grains and kombucha mushrooms can be purchased, but there is also a culture (pun intended! ) of sharing, too.....receive free, give free. We can use this thread to keep track, if you don't find any, and you can get some from those of us who now have them growing!

Thanks, I'd love to get on your waiting list! I'm willing to drive.
You're probably less than 20 minutes away from where we got our puppy (East Granby). We were driving up there every other week until he was old enough to come home. It's not a bad drive at all.

 

[big brown horse]

Maybe if we all pitched in, we could make a human kefir grain train right over to the west cost!!!!

 

[Henrietta23]

Maybe if we all pitched in, we could make a human kefir grain train right over to the west cost!!!!

LOL, who knows! We got a dog up from West Virginia to CT that way!

 

[freemotion]

BBH, I would be happy to ship, but my experience on the receiving end was so bad, I can't see bothering. If your kombucha doesn't work out, it might be worth it to get the priority mail box and I can send both at once. It would be better to wait until the weather is cooler, though, as it would end up in the hold of a plane, and it would cook!

 

[ORChick]

One big reason that kefir grains aren't in stores (and kombucha too, I'll bet) is that they are active cultures that need tending - straining, new milk, in the case of kefir - every day or so. Its not a lot of work, but it isn't really something that most commercial places would want to have to deal with, I would think. I found this place to buy them, but at their price I didn't want to do that as an experiment, and then find that I hated the stuff.

http://www.gemcultures.com/

In the end I got mine from another forum friend in Ontario, Canada. A few weeks ago I dehydrated some of mine as an experiment, and sent some of the dried grains to freemotion. As you have read, they are doing great now. It takes about a week to get them back to their normal state.