Kefir Grains

[WordsOfLittleWorth]

I searched around the forums and the general idea seems to be "health food shop". But that's kind of vague (all health food shops? what does a Taiwanese health food shop look like anyway?). So I was wondering if anyone has a tried and true method of obtaining healthy kefir grains, short of ordering them online and having them shipped across the world.

[TheLostSwede]

You can get something similar here, it's not exactly kefir, but it's a kind of soured/fermented milk product, but runnier than yoghurt.
It's sold as Active Lactic Culture and the packages looks something like this depending on the brand.

Expect to pay about NT$250 for a pack of 10 sachets which each makes 1l of the stuff. You'll find it in the refrigerator in most health food shops here. You can usually make a few more batches from what you made from the sachets, but it doesn't seem to go on forever. Also, it's done in room temperature, but it doesn't seem to be happy if it's too hot or too cold. I couldn't make it set here in the winter and I've had problems in the summer sometimes.

[WordsOfLittleWorth]

From the packaging it seems like that Active Lactic Culture is just various yogurt producing bacteria mixed together. It's probably a nice product but it's definitely not kefir.

[TheLostSwede]

It's not yoghurt, that's for sure, as it's way too runny to be yoghurt and it doesn't need high temperatures to solidify, it's more like Swedish Filmjölk, but not quite.
You can buy yoghurt culture here as well, but I've seen prices of NT$500 and up for that which is insane.

[syrianrue]

Does anyone have or know where I can find true Kefir Grains or kombucha culture for making kefir and kombucha tea with?

ordering them from the u.s. would cost a lot more than i desired :\

thanks in advance,
-Michael

[Bobarctor]

bump

Did you find ?

[Dragonbones]

No, that was a bump in order to be able to merge a redundant new thread with an existing thread on the same topic. It's hard to merge redundant new threads by, for instance, people who haven't searched for a topic (or who searched but didn't find one) with existing threads unless the latter are floating near the top of the forum.

[John]

I got my kefir grains from http://www.kefirlady.com/

Still going strong after about 5 years!

[maouininfo]

I live in Chang Hua and I am also looking to get some kefir grains. Does any one on here have grains that they would be willing to mail to me? COD postage would be fine.