:-O What the Heck?!?!?! Kefir question

[tilly_sue]

The top of my kefir is blue. We use it every day, I just divided the grains yesterday. Yesterday there was a little blue spot that appeared to be like a stray dot of food coloring or something (I just finished a big birthday cake so that wouldn't be unbelievable). We had our smoothies last night and all was well. Smells fine, tastes fine, nobody is sick. But my friend who got the grains yesterday (I just spooned them out of my container) just called to say that hers is blue too. I checked today's load and sure enough, there's a nice baby blue coating on the top! We use a fresh clean container every day... can't figure out what's wrong!

My plan right now is to use it like normal today but rinse off the grains with some milk before putting them in the clean container (we're drinking smoothies for dinner during the summer). Has anyone seen this before? Any tips? We've been drinking kefir for a few months now and this is the first time something really funky has happened.

[ltlmrs]

I have drunk kefir all my life and I would not drink blue kefir. It may be contaminated.

I would toss the kefir and rinse the grains with distilled water and then leave them in a jar of distilled water over night. After 24 hours, I would put them in fresh milk and let it culture. If the blue is still present, I would get new grains.

Dom's site is very useful. See the last paragraph of that section and the next two sections.

[JaneS]

Contaminated with whatever makes bleu cheese culture? that's penicillin, no?