Here you can see The final brew, the third and last ferment with organic pears and organic sultanas.
You can see them floating in the Kilner jars and then once sieved through a plastic mesh sieve, the contents is poured into the glass Kilner bottles with the airtight swivel tops.
Billions and billions of Probiotics just waiting to weave their magic and repopulate our gut biome.
Poppy the 🐈
I love making this stuff!
I think my favourite is ginger root. Hubby complained that it was not "hot" enough and I think where I was going wrong was just putting discs or chopped cubes of ginger into the second ferment. Yesterday I grated almost a fist of ginger and squeezed out the juices into the second brew and threw in the remaining pulp for good measure! Should be ready tomorrow evening and I hope it's strong 
I also love a berry one with raspberries, blueberries and strawberries but had to remember to discard the fruits for fresh after 24 hours . I like the raisins too, I love the way they swell up, prunes were nice too!
Have to say the ginger kefir water was lovely when we had that awful chest/dry cough bug that was going round and I'm sure we were spared the worst of the symptoms and longevity.
I think to make the ginger flavour really hot people put some chili in, too 
I've just started my first batch of some viili yoghurt. I've wanted it for ages, since I heard a story on a podcast of a man who had left his viili in a bowl overnight to ferment. But it was filled a bit too high, and when he came down the next morning, the stringiness of it had pulled everything over the edge of the bowl and it was empty.
I'm dying to taste the stringiest slimy-est yoghurt I hadn't realised before I bought the culture, but this is mesophilic, which means it develops at room temperature and I don't have to heat the milk. Much easier for low energy levels. But I think it means it will be less thick. I'll strain it to try to make it thicker. But I hope it doesn't turn out too thin, I like a thick yoghurt the best.
Oohhhh🤔.... Please keep me updated. Am very very curious.
It sounds a bit Hammer House of Horror! Terrific!
Thank you, looking for to hearing about it.
Poppy the 🐈
Hehe Send me PM and I will let you know in a couple of weeks. Otherwise I'll forget!
Will do!
What date's the gathering, & will you remind everyone in advance?
SilverAvocado I've never heard of villi yoghurt, I'm looking it up now...
My kefir grains were very slimy when I first got them, though are rarely so now. It ferments in the fridge, but much slower & with a different taste to warm fermentation. Different critters dominate depending on the temperature. All great stuff!
There are a lot of Scandinavian yoghurt varieties. We don't get anything like it in this country, just one boring thing.
Although buttermilk is also a ferment, and I noticed you can buy cultures for that. I heard of someone drinking it every day like kefir.
I found out about Viili on a podcast about fermentation called Ferm Up. But they seen to have stopped doing it anymore, I think there's a website. I just surf around reading things.
Last year I was loving making my own yoghurt, sometimes eating a litre at a time. It was lovely warm out of the thermos. It's got tons more texture and bite than bought yoghurt. I can't eat that anymore, it seems plastic-y and insubstantial to me. That was Bulgarian yoghurt, which is more or less what we have in the UK, except this is more like the wild culture, while supermarket yoghurt is more like battery farmed bacteria - I think that comparison more or less makes sense.
So I'm a bit disappointed to realise my viili isn't going to be warm. But it is supposed to be ropey! If it goes well I can bring a jar along to the meet up, for anyone to taste or grow their own.
I tried skyr, & threw it away, though I'm up for trying most things veggie. I get the occasional pot of Greek for savoury meals, & sometimes get a pot of Collective as I have a sweet tooth. In summer, my kefir tummy beasts tell me to drink a lot & eat fruit, & in winter, to eat leeks & cavolo nero. I'm in agreeance with the idea that the gut is a second brain, & go along with it.
I took such special care to incubate my kefir when I first started making it, but now it's so robust, I just make sure the milk is very fresh as it ferments in my very cold fridge. I tried bought stuff when I was away, & found it ok, though it only contains about 7 strains of lactobacillus, & they won't be very live or they'd explode on the shop shelves.
Surely you could put your viili in a warm bath, if that's how you prefer to eat it?
I'm definitely up for a swapsie if you'd like some kefir grains as I have an excess!
Oh yes, swap sounds good I think it will offer to bring kombucha or yoghurt for whoever wants it to the next meetup. Although may not have enough jars 
I'm not sure what the viili with think about being warm if it likes room temperature. I'm still figuring out the mesiphilic. Heating the milk is supposed to misalign the proteins so that they make yoghurt thicker, so I might heat it first anyway. I've just found out I can get raw milk at the monthly market here, so will try that, too.
That's what hummus pots are useful for!
I used t boil then cool my kefir milk, though it only affected the texture of the ryazhenka I cultured from a commercial bottle. That's really nice & creamy, with a slight custardy taste. Might make some of that soon. I stopped fermenting that as it wasn't as high in B12 as kefir, though I don't absorb the B12 well, anyway.
Is it the LL market that's on monthly? There's a farm west of here that sells raw milk, & one over't'water.
Lark lane farmers market. The farm is in Cheshire and I think they were there last month for the first time. The also go to Love Street. It's a couple called Hollinshead
Fab!
LL's closer than Cheshire, & raw milk is lovely!
7th Feb is the next meetup. I'll make a post and send a PM I think. Probably a week before. Will have to try and get my printer to work and hand out all the dates.
Thanks Louise!
I'd lose a piece of paper, so a calendar reminder would be best. I'm putting the 7th in now, with several reminders!
I think the plan was every second month, first Wednesday.
This is a meetup in Liverpool for anyone else reading. Sorry for hijacking your thread, Poppy_the_cat!
I hadn't realised there were so many different types of cultures for yogurt. Having read your post, I went off on a google search re villi yogurt and found this on matsoni! nourishedkitchen.com/easy-h...
I'm on the look out for a non dairy recipe?
I'm not familiar with any non-dairy yoghurts. You may be better off with water kefir or kombucha if it's the good bacteria you're interested in, as they live on sugar water and tea respectively.
I've got a recipe for coconut yogurt, but it was a bit too sweet and bland for me when I tried it. I've done kombucha in the past, but am going to try Poppy_the_cat 's water kefir next
I had a quick search for non-dairy yoghurts, you can definitely buy the cultures. But I'm not sure if you can keep it going generation after generation. My experience has been that they're always better after a few months when they've got used to the environment you're giving them and got stronger.
The recipe I tried, the woman said she adds in new dairy yogurt as a new starter every couple of months, and wasn't worried about the small amount of dairy doing that. Nor am I, but I just wasn't keen on the finished taste! Thanks for having a look
That does sound like a huge nuisance. You'd have to love the yoghurt to do it
It's the heating and cooling down that's the real pain. Liking the sound of the villi stuff at room temperature
I didn't use to mind the heating when I got into the routine of doing it every week. But I think the viili is going to be a lot more convenient. Although it takes 2 days to ferment, which is a bit more hassle. The thermophilics do overnight.
My kefir likes a nip of coffee as well as a second fruit fermentation.
Yours looks much better than my attempt did. Can’t remember what I had in mine, think it was dried figs but the organic pears and sultanas sound good. Like the colour of it.
If it helped get rid of the horrid chest / cough/ cold bug then I really think it’s time for me to try it again. The bug is driving me round the bend. I’ve had it for almost three weeks now and just when I think I’m feeling better - back it comes again.
Poppy_the_cat , that looks so scrumptious! Let me know when you're in full production and I'll place my order
Ha-ha-ha 🤣 you Darling! Funny that you should say so, as somebody locally wants me to feature on their website producing it!! It really is so delicious, it tastes like Perry edging towards Champagne!! ....hic..😜
But really the benefits are astounding?
Popps
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