4 ms·

He went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainabil

He went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainability; if a combustion engine is used for shipping the milk, and if refrigeration is used, there is no sustainability left. We ferment milk, using what's called 'kefir' bacteria's - the health benefits compared to raw milk are hard to believe, and the milk can sit at room temperature for over a year without any problems. We make cheese with it and it ages very well. Raw milk isn't sustainable.

FooHentai 8y ago
>He went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainability. That sounds reasonable but the scale and population of NZ prevents this. Many 'Cities' here, excluding the biggest few, would be considered small towns in most other countries. Regardless of the small scale, corner stores are owned by one of two big groups. The non-retailers you're imagining him leveraging don't really exist here on any scale that would work. The population, outside of these few cities is so sparse that there's no small-scale retain presence. So if you attempt to start local you're selling to a market of a few hundred, at best. Of that market you would need significant uptake to make any headway.
newscracker 8y ago
> We ferment milk, using what's called 'kefir' bacteria's - the health benefits compared to raw milk are hard to believe, and the milk can sit at room temperature for over a year without any problems. Once you ferment it, isn't it yogurt, and no longer milk? Do you use it for beverages like coffee, tea, shakes, etc.? If you leave it out for a year (or even a few weeks), doesn't it get completely fermented and become sour? Doesn't it get fungus after a few weeks? Or do you turn it into cheese soon after fermenting (which has a much longer life)?
- scottie_m 8y ago
  I’m not an expert, and a year sounds like a long time, but here’s some information to answer a few of your questions. Is it yogurt? Sort of. Sour cream is also fermented milk products, but we don’t call it yogurt. That’s maybe a bit arbitrary, but there it is. In the case of kefir, I’d argue that the distinction is valid. Yogurt is just inoculated with various strains of bacteria, which eat milk sugars and produce lactic acid. That lactic acid is delicious, and it also tends to kill any invading microbes that might make us sick, like fungi. Kefir is similar, but is inoculated with “grains” of a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Kefir is like... milk kombucha. Sort of. (Real) Kefir is actually carbonated and very slightly alcoholic, because the yeast is doing part of the sugar-eating, producing CO2 and ethanol as a result. In that sense it’s kind of like milk beer, or milk-yogurt-beer, you get the idea. Cheese is a whole different beast! When you make cheese you use an enzyme, rennet, to separate curds from whey in fresh milk. What you next depends on the cheese, and doesn’t have to even involve aging or fermentation. Of course, some cheese is allowed to react with fungi (Brie), or swabbed with bacterial cultures(Muenster), or exposed to wild strains of both. Incidentally you can also ferment butter, which develops a somewhat cheesy flavor due to lactic acid fermentation, but because it’s not treated with rennet and is almost pure fat is Not cheese. Finally, the lactic acid produced in any fermentation process will eventually be concentrated enough to kill everything including the “good” bacteria, just like yeast will eventually kill itself with a high enough concentration of alcohol. So there is a limit to how fermented something can be, and after that you’re just aging it. Of course the traditional way with kefir was to keep adding milk and kefir grains to the existing kefir. The result was sort of perpetual fermentation, almost like a sourdough starter, or kombucha “mother” can be continuously fed and fed upon.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    Thanks for the detailed reply. I do know a bit about kefir and have used it to ferment things. So I was wondering what product is it that stays out for long, which I now understand is kefir itself. For some reason I thought maybe it was referring to something else in the GPs comment. As for the process of straining it and feeding it to perpetually make more kefir, I've known about that for quite sometime.

FooHentai 8y ago

>He went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainability. That sounds reasonable but the scale and population of NZ prevents this. Many 'Cities' here, excluding the biggest few, would be considered small towns in most other countries. Regardless of the small scale, corner stores are owned by one of two big groups. The non-retailers you're imagining him leveraging don't really exist here on any scale that would work. The population, outside of these few cities is so sparse that there's no small-scale retain presence. So if you attempt to start local you're selling to a market of a few hundred, at best. Of that market you would need significant uptake to make any headway.

newscracker 8y ago

> We ferment milk, using what's called 'kefir' bacteria's - the health benefits compared to raw milk are hard to believe, and the milk can sit at room temperature for over a year without any problems. Once you ferment it, isn't it yogurt, and no longer milk? Do you use it for beverages like coffee, tea, shakes, etc.? If you leave it out for a year (or even a few weeks), doesn't it get completely fermented and become sour? Doesn't it get fungus after a few weeks? Or do you turn it into cheese soon after fermenting (which has a much longer life)?

scottie_m 8y ago
I’m not an expert, and a year sounds like a long time, but here’s some information to answer a few of your questions. Is it yogurt? Sort of. Sour cream is also fermented milk products, but we don’t call it yogurt. That’s maybe a bit arbitrary, but there it is. In the case of kefir, I’d argue that the distinction is valid. Yogurt is just inoculated with various strains of bacteria, which eat milk sugars and produce lactic acid. That lactic acid is delicious, and it also tends to kill any invading microbes that might make us sick, like fungi. Kefir is similar, but is inoculated with “grains” of a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Kefir is like... milk kombucha. Sort of. (Real) Kefir is actually carbonated and very slightly alcoholic, because the yeast is doing part of the sugar-eating, producing CO2 and ethanol as a result. In that sense it’s kind of like milk beer, or milk-yogurt-beer, you get the idea. Cheese is a whole different beast! When you make cheese you use an enzyme, rennet, to separate curds from whey in fresh milk. What you next depends on the cheese, and doesn’t have to even involve aging or fermentation. Of course, some cheese is allowed to react with fungi (Brie), or swabbed with bacterial cultures(Muenster), or exposed to wild strains of both. Incidentally you can also ferment butter, which develops a somewhat cheesy flavor due to lactic acid fermentation, but because it’s not treated with rennet and is almost pure fat is Not cheese. Finally, the lactic acid produced in any fermentation process will eventually be concentrated enough to kill everything including the “good” bacteria, just like yeast will eventually kill itself with a high enough concentration of alcohol. So there is a limit to how fermented something can be, and after that you’re just aging it. Of course the traditional way with kefir was to keep adding milk and kefir grains to the existing kefir. The result was sort of perpetual fermentation, almost like a sourdough starter, or kombucha “mother” can be continuously fed and fed upon.
- newscracker 8y ago
  Thanks for the detailed reply. I do know a bit about kefir and have used it to ferment things. So I was wondering what product is it that stays out for long, which I now understand is kefir itself. For some reason I thought maybe it was referring to something else in the GPs comment. As for the process of straining it and feeding it to perpetually make more kefir, I've known about that for quite sometime.