Here’s a sublime, cool, radical, cost effective, healthy way to culture a living probiotic source for diet. Submitted for the good and long life of all. One of the 7 secrets to a long life recommended by the ancient heathens. Forget what most of the other 6 were, but they were worthy of consideration.
 
Note that if you are “lactose intolerant” meaning that you got to scrape the walls 10 minutes after you drink a glass of milk, the double sugars in the milk are broken down to “mono saccharides” in the culture process, so you may well be able to safely tolerate this. Nobody was supposed to be nursing after a couple years, so many can’t take milk products, heavily racially driven on who aborts the enzyme needed to digest milk after infancy. Blacks worse than whites, and Asians worse than blacks to the extent that certain Asian populations consider cow milk inedible because of an 80% plus toxic reaction to an ice cream cone..
 
Hardware needed is one of them Igloo type lunch coolers and 4 wide mouth Mason jars with lids and maybe a thermometer if you don’t trust the count to 10 hot finger rule.
 
Purpose of the probiotic is to replace or augment the friendly bacteria in the intestine that is ravaged over time and maladaptive diet, blasted by antibiotics, etc. Side note to the fertile ladies out there relative to antibiotics and your hormone birth control pills… If you got an infected foot and the doc puts you on antibiotics, consider your protection to be null and void for the rest of the current cycle. All deals with the disruption of intestinal good guys.
 
Holistic health claims (can’t prove the exact numbers, just passing the thought) that the intestinal content of good guys vs bad guys in about a one year old breast fed baby is 80% good and 20% bad with the 80 percent keeping the bad guys under control by several means. The bad guys are such that if they get loose, they can produce poisons so powerful that a volume the size of the head of a pin will kill you in a couple days. This is fact. We all got the time bomb ticking waiting for a come back during times of weakness, so to everyone’s best interest to maintain control.
 
The swami guru guys claim that once we have sunken to a processed cannibal diet of decomposing corpses, the ratio goes the other way to 80% bad guys and 20% good guys. Not enough to kill us outright, but a severe drag on health and accelerates the aging process, shortens life span.
 
Holy crap, we got a sun break out here. Got to break to take down two small dead trees on the ocean cliff but will get back with the recipe. Igloo cooler and 4 Mason jars needed.
 
Love to all,
John
 

See now? This is some hi brow shiz.
 
lulz...
 
AND
 
hmm...
 
*golf clap*

You right Beep, fifth avenue shiz if they ever was.  Now... for the recipe everyone has been waiting for!!!
 
Almost fool proof…
 
In a big clean pot, bring up to near boiling, a gallon of whole milk, not the wimp lo fat stuff. Need the full blast, artery clogging 4% flow directly from the cow's tit. In India, we used buffalo milk, so an option as well. Come to think of it, goats would probably work too.
 
For a better product, fortify with a cup or two powdered milk, ¼ teaspoon salt, heaping tablespoon of sugar or honey. Gives the bugs something more aggressive to grow on.
 
Bringing the mix to just simmering, which pasteurizes out most pathogens. Takes some finesse not to burn the bottom of the pot. Let the mix cool to 110-115 degrees (F). Check either with a thermometer (more precise) or the count to 10 finger rule. Means with a clean finger, immerse in the milk. Count to 10 and if you got to pull your finger out, you are in the ballpark. Make sure your finger is clean so you don't get something else growing in there.
 
At this point, inoculate the mix with a couple tablespoons live yogurt and stir. Choice is yours. Has to have live cultures though, or nothing will happen (disclaimer on most labels if the thing is live or dead. Some brand pasteurize before (cool) but some pasteurize after which kills off what you are trying to get (not cool). I mix and match, but try to use at least one source with multiple types. The "Greek" yogurt thing is not properly understood because it is more expensive and thought to contain some esoteric culture. Nothing unique about it. They just do a normal culture but squeeze the liquid out of it as an extra step making it more condensed, so therefore the claim that it has more protein and the claim that the bacterial count is higher. Works for a culture, but you are not getting anything exotic.
 
Stir in the starter with the 110 degree milk. As you all become yogurt freaks and perfect and fine tune the process, you will see that temperature is a big determinant in what you get from the effort regardless of the culture.
 
Temps too hi will kill off the bugs or put them to sleep inside spore capsules. Temps too low will not work. Within the range of maybe 105-125 degrees, you can control the end product. Higher temps give a sharper yogurt with more whey separation on top (save the whey for cooking in a stir fry). Cooler temps produce a more mild yogurt with less whey separation.
 
The gallon will fill 4 clean wide mouth Mason jars with some left over. Pour in up to the rim and put a lid on. Wash the jars and lids in hot tap water first so you don’t get something else growing in there…
 
The 4 jars will nicely fit into the Igloo cooler. Fill the cooler up to the jar rims in hot tap water. Close the cooler and set aside where it won’t be disturbed. I generally do this at night and let the mix sit while asleep so it won’t be vibrated or disturbed.
 
Next morning, got 4 jars of vibrant probiotic. Nothing like the sleepy stuff that has been sitting in the dairy isle for a couple months. Refrigerate and will keep for a long time.
 
Can be used in cooking, but note that cooking kills the probiotic and defeats the purpose.
 
For the purist, I’d advise to avoid the artificially sweetened starters. The sweet taste permeates even if it has been way diluted. Bummer, because Activia brand has one of the most macho single element sources, but no way to escape the artificial sugar in the first generation culture. Maybe some more info on this if there is any interest.
 
John
 
 

Last notes on the yogurt culture process. Promise to take a break from the Coffee House thing. Your intestines will thank you as well as getting some more time out of our short stay in the dirt with a better quality of life.
 
You get up the next morning after this experiment and can only be fired up if not blown away by what you have just done. Success whatever it is in the jars. It seems to be solid when last night it was a liquid.
 
Take off a couple tablespoons of the new mix and freeze it solid. This is the next starter when you need. Economic benefit to save money far into the future. Works good for the next batch...
 
Philosophical thing about all this, a statement about life and survival in general.
 
Long time ago, there was an airplane flying over some place in England. They saw a giant half mile wide “fairy ring” of mushrooms that could only be seen from an areal view. Know that a mushroom in our lawn is like an apple on a tree. They look like a semi plant, but are only the fruiting body of the real entity spreading under ground doing its thing. The fairy rings are all the product of a single spore somewhere in the past that took hold beneath the soil. Can potentially continue to spread until the next holocaust.
 
They did the calculations and concluded that this thing was between 4 and 8 thousand years old.
 
Scientists thought that they had discovered immortal life and set up a time capsule to send cultures down thru the millennia just for the joy of it.
 
They supplied the underground mycelium culture with every nutrient a mushroom could need for the good life. Kick back and enjoy. Temperature controlled, safe, protected. Immortality.
 
The plant exploded into growth with the new found safety net, but after 2 months started to wane away.
 
Secret to the mushroom’s survival was not being given the easy life. Survival was in the struggle to survive as was in the clash of the natural environment.
 
Like us, like yogurt… We all want the good easy life on the surface, but deeper, require the struggle and need the beating to continue.
 
Romanian culture relied on the cultured product in their diet. For reasons they did not understand, you took a couple tablespoons of starter, but you did not keep it. You gave the starter to your neighbor and received a new starter from another neighbor.
 
This kept environmental clash up to speed so that your culture didn’t piss out to dysfunction.
 
Way to avoid this short of using a new culture from Walmart, is to slightly vary the medium, one batch to the next. Used white sugar last time, use honey this time or whatever. Don’t let the bugs slack off. Otherwise, your starter will begin to wash out on about the third generation attempt.
 
John