The genome of kefir
Take home message Kefir grains (= kefir plant = SCOBY) can be found all over the world, but are there any differences? The dairy industry has discovered kefir in the past 10 years and you can buy kefir everywhere in …
All posts filed under: Milk
Traditional cheesemaking
Take home message No stainless steel Today, everything around milk and milk processing is stainless steel (INOX). The cheese vat in which the milk is processed is stainless steel, the milk pipelines through which the milk is pumped and even …
What do you call kefir?
Take home message Kefir from SCOBY versus kefir made of a commercial starter? German colleagues (Nejafati et al., 2022) looked at not only the microbial composition of kefir, but also the metabolic products of the bacteria and yeasts present in …
Symbiocene kefir
Take home message Symbiocene thinking Through the Dutch TV-programme ‘Tegenlicht’, it became clear, that a new way of thinking, a philosophy, is needed to leave the Anthropocene era behind us. We are living in the Anthropocene, the human-dominated technological age. Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albre sought new concepts to express our feelings associated with experiencing nature. Unfortunately, many of these feelings stem from human destruction of nature and the environment, urbanisation and artificial ways of …
Bulgarian-, Turkish- or Greek yoghurt?
Take home message One big family? Fermented dairy products vary from region to region, if only in name. Yoghurt is part of this family of fermented products. Lactic acid is produced by the conversion of milk sugar. Sometimes acetic acid …
Lactose in milkproducts
Lactose intolerance Lactose is milk sugar, found in a concentration of 4-5% in cow milk. People with lactose intolerance cannot digest lactose in the small intestine, so too much undigested lactose ends up in the large intestine. Here, lactose causes …
STEC, a Loch Ness monster!
How do you find a needle in a haystack? Currently, effort and money are being invested by the Dutch government to take another step in food safety. Raw milk sale will be released on 1 January 2025, but that comes …
Mummified kefir grains
Take home message A mummy about 3,500 years old from the Xiahoe cemetery in China. The red arrows point to the kefir grains lying around the neck like a chain (taken from Liu et al., 2024) Lactose conversion SCOBY we …
E.coli is suppressed in kefir
Take home message Fermentation rather than pasteurisation An important goal of pasteurisation of milk is to reduce the germ count, both total and that of specific bacteria, such as E.coli. Usually, pasteurisation is said to be ‘successful’ when the mesophilic …
Natural cheese making
Take home message 5-day training course During the last week of May 2024, he taught a 5-day course at a Bio-Suisse farm in the Jura. In a tight program, one or two types of cheese were made daily. In addition, …
