Spice – Brewing kefir with powdered cinnamon

cinnamonkefirspices

I've been experimenting with brewing with kefir. Fruit and fruit juice produces a nice tasty result but I would like to use ginger, nutmeg and a lot of cinnamon.

The common answer for using cinnamon is to place a cinnamon stick into the mix. This allows the stick to be easily separated from the kefir grains after brewing (so they can be reused) and does not leave bits in the final product.

However, I do not have any. I do have medicinal quantities of my favourite spices. I looked into muslin bags which are often used to make herbs easy to remove after cooking. Given how fine the powdered spices are, I have no idea if this will work.

Is there any way to infuse the spices into the water without ending up with "gunk" (I am sure there is a better term)?

Best Answer

Since no one else answered, I'll give you what I can.

Disclaimer: I never brewed with kefir grains. I brew beer, ciders, sometimes yogurt, and kefir started from commercial kefir.

I'm a big fan of cinnamon. So what I tried:

  • Filtration bags from brewers store simply fail to keep cinnamon dust in.
  • Filtration bags, extra fine cinnamon dust and gunk glue them so good that you can't really taste cinnamon in the final product.
  • Muslin bags as one of the above, depending on how thick and dense fabric is.
  • Dense metal mesh like the one you use on frying pan - tried to use it in couple of ways but nothing really worked.

Now, what worked? The only thing that worked for me was to first brew without cinnamon, then get my yeast out for reuse, and only then add cinnamon. After a day or two I decanted my brew leaving gunk on the bottom. Sadly this probably won't work for milk kefir. Sure won't work for yogurt, it's too thick. For juice-based drink it might work. It worked for me with ales and ciders fermented with yeast. Note: I needed to pitch fresh yeast with priming sugar to get any carbonation.

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