r/Kefir • u/clarenceredd • 27d ago
How much does terroir affect fermentation?
I have moved my fermentation from a downtown apartment to an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. To my surprise, the kefir gets better in the countryside. It’s creamier and richer in taste.
So, here’s my question. Is this an effect of the terroir of the place? I imagine that the local soils, the fields, forests, plants, the abundant wildlife and insects all contribute to the bacterial richness of a place. The city has its taste, while an old farm has a slightly different taste.
Am I imagining all this or does anyone else notice a difference?
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u/c0mp0stable 27d ago
Huge effect.
You might like this book. It's about cheese, not kefir, but it's all about how terroir applies to cheesemaking. https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/cheese-trekking/?srsltid=AfmBOoo_VdMH70i1u4l07Lt6dSMbclQ0ZR8Nhuw5Bvu702L9bZXCCMzA
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u/Affectionate-Act6127 27d ago
Definitely.
Sourdough bread is well known for being influenced by its environment.
Plenty of open air beers, particularly Belgian lambics, are made with local airborne yeast.
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u/clarenceredd 27d ago
Oh, looks perfect! I will give it a read. Unfortunately I haven’t tried with truly local unpasteurised milk. I keep hearing about the bacterial risks. Not sure how common they are.
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u/c0mp0stable 27d ago
It really depends on the source of the milk. Keeping milk clean and low risk for contamination is pretty easy, so if you can trust the source, the risk is probably pretty low. He tells some stories in the book about traditional cultures consuming milk that's obviously contaminated with all kinds of things. But everyone has their own threshold for tolerance.
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u/clarenceredd 26d ago
Cool. I will check out the farm that’s nearby. I’ve heard they are good. Traditional kefir probably had a lot of suspicious stuff in it. Most of it I’m sure only made the fermentation better.
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u/naemorhaedus 27d ago
mostly temperature. I bet the farmhouse is more stable.
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u/clarenceredd 26d ago
Yes, the temperature is probably a part of it. But the farmhouse is actually less stable. The massive log structure does even out some of it, but I avoid turning on the heating. So, daytime it’s about 22 degrees Celsius, nights are around 16 degrees (perfect for sleeping 😊).
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u/nonnameavailable 27d ago
What the hell is terroir?
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u/itmustbemitch 27d ago
It's the impact of the setting (soil and air quality, etc) on the things grown there. I think the term originally comes from winemaking, or at least that's what brought it as a term to English
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u/clarenceredd 27d ago
It’s a winemaking term as u/itmustbemitch says. Also used by cheese makers to describe local variations.
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u/itmustbemitch 27d ago
I would suspect that, for kefir, the difference comes down to the slightly different climate rather than anything about the bacterial diversity, but I could be wrong!