Kefir or Yogurt

[JimmieC]

I'm totally new to making yogurt/kefir and have a newbie question. I purchased a bottle of Lifeway blueberry flavored kefir and dumped about 1/3 cup into a quart of whole milk and then put in a Bear yogurt maker for 20 hrs and then into fridge overnight. What I made had the consistency of heavy cream, tart but with a little honey was quite good. My question is - did I make yogurt or kefir?
Thanks,
Jim

[Christopher Weeks]

My answer is that the distinction between the two is somewhat artificial or arbitrary and what you did isn't exactly either one. There's overlap in the set of microbes responsible for the two treatments, though the pool of microbes is larger in milk kefir than in what most people mean by yogurt. Also, as far as I know, kefir is made at room temp and slowed in the fridge.

If you really *had* to pigeonhole what you did, the safest from a communications-with-other-fermenter-people, is you made a "bad" yogurt. But I'll be interested to see if anyone else here has a different stance.

[JimmieC]

Hi Christopher,
Thank for responding to my "mystery" creation. I purchased some freeze dried kefir starter and plan on making some genuine "good" kefir. Although, my mystery yogurt with honey over oats and blueberries ain't too "bad".
Jim