How Kéfir is Made

This is Notre Dame Creamery, the dairy that makes the Organic Meadow kéfir.

Its a small dairy but they are very versatile and make several different dairy products.

This is Guy, the owner and manager of the dairy.

The organic milk is delivered in designated milk trucks.

Inside the dairy, the milk is separated to 1% milk fat, then homogenized and then pasteurized before being made into kéfir.

This is the stainless steal tank where the kéfir is made. 2700 Ls of pasteurized organic milk is put into this tank. Then a very small amount of cultures are added and mixed into the milk.

The milk and cultures mixture is then incubated at approximately 40°C for 8-10hours, or until the proper pH is reached. Now we have Organic Meadow kéfir!

The plain is ready for packaging, so it would be pumped directly to the filler to be put into jugs and labelled. However, the fruit varieties have an added step.

In order to ensure that the fruit varieties of kéfir are properly mixed, the plain kéfir is pumped into small tanks that have slow speed mixers in them.

The fruit mixture, which is similar in consistency to jam, is added to the plain kéfir and blended in. This takes approximately 20 minutes.

It is important not to pump the kéfir too fast, otherwise it will 'whip' it and the product lose its consistency.

Once the raspberry, blueberry and strawberry fruit mixture is combined, the product(s) are ready to be packaged and labelled.

The labels go on fist, then they wait their turn to be filled.

There is a rotating filler that has 6 filler heads to be as efficient as possible.

Once the bottles are completely full they move over to the capper, which places the screw caps onto the bottles and ensures that they are nice and tight.

Now they are ready to go directly to the walk in cooler to be put into cases and shipped out.