Where To Find Kefir Grains

If the health benefits of kefir get you excited, and you want to make your own kefir, then you will first need to find out where to find kefir grains.

There are several places you can look, and some sources are better than others. You may be able to get some from a friend, from an online store, or from a local health food store. Once you are familiar with each of these sources, you will be prepared to do some research to find your favorite source of kefir grains.

From Nearby Friends

The best place to find kefir grains is locally, from friends or family. They might give a few to you for a couple dollars, or they may even give them free. Ask them if they're willing to sell some to you, and how much they would sell them for. You only need a couple grains (five to ten or less, depending on their size) to get started with a cup of milk.

As kefir grains are regularly used (when they are immersed in fresh milk every 24 hours), they grow in size and eventually will multiply. By obtaining fresh kefir grains (which are pretty large in size), you can start turning milk into kefir within 24 hours. This is the best scenario!

There's a handy little web page you may want to check out, too. It's an international listing of local people who want to share their kefir grains. Check out this list of local kefir grain sources.

Note: If you know of any dairy farms in your area that sell kefir, they just might sell kefir grains, too!

From A Local Health Food Store

The second place you can look is at health food stores in your area. Typically, store-bought grains are dehydrated, which means you have to go through a process to re-hydrate them before you can produce ready-to-eat kefir.

Usually, all that is needed is that you soak the dehydrated grains in milk and replace the milk every 24 hours (throw out the resulting kefir) for a couple days, and then the grains will be more acclimated and will continue growing over the following weeks and months.

From An Online Store

There are plenty of websites online that sell kefir grains. And as it is with local stores, online stores typically sell dehydrated grains, which must then be rehydrated through a process of soaking the grains in milk for a few days.

If you do get your grains from a store online or locally, make sure you do your research! The quality of the grains are determined by the quality of the milk that was used to nurture them. In other words, kefir grains that have been soaked in pasteurized and homogonized milk will not be as healthy as those that are soaked in raw milk from grass-fed cows.

I personally recommend Michael Patterson's Kefir Grains and Video Course, which gets you enough kefir grains to get started, plus over 2 hours of video training material online. This is the exact course I took to learn most of what I know about making kefir, and I am using the grains I purchased from him.

As you can see, you can find grains to make kefir from a variety of places. The best place to get them is from friends or family closeby. You can also purchase them at a local health food store, or online. Now that you know where to find kefir grains, it's time to learn how to make your own kefir.

Ready to start making kefir? Buy kefir grains here.

Next: What To Do With Extra Kefir Grains