There are three ingredients and four steps to making your own yogurt: ultra pasturized half and half (for those of you who live outside of the United States, it’s half milk/half heavy cream), a bacteria, and inulin. You add these all together and heat the mix for 36 hours. The rest of this article is explaining how to fix things that can go wrong, and at the very bottom, links to why you want to try this.
I am on a probiotic kick. These dairy ferments, and these particular brands of supplements, are recommended for gut health and good bacteria repopulation.
After any course of antibiotics, even if it was twenty (or more) years ago, you probably wiped these out. Lactobacillus Reuteri, Lactobacillus Gasseri, and Bacillus Coagulens are extremely sensitive to antibiotics and most of us are not re-exposed to these in our daily diets.
Most of us no longer have these helpful bacteria in our guts, because most Americans have used multiple rounds of antibiotics in their lifetimes. If you are interested in the specifics as to what these three bacteria do, what portions of your body they colonize and how you can heal your gut: I will direct you to a video of Dr Davis who is the author of the wheat belly diet.
Unfortunately, most of Dr Davis’ blog articles are behind a paywall. If you scroll to the bottom of this post I have listed medical journals with studies on these three bacteria. Now, over a year into making my own yogurt I have branched out. I looked for the largest variety of bacteria in one pill and I came up with this product:
I learned how to make this, and to use these brands, from a few different YouTubers. I’m going to assume that you have done your research and you’re now just looking for information to easily make these fermented dairy products. (If you’ve never heard of this, then you should go down the links below to get more information.)
The reason you want to make these fermented milk products (all of these ferments end up looking and tasting like Greek Gods plain yogurt) instead of just taking the pills is: you get exponential growth of these bacteria as they ferment over 36 hours. So you get many billion more healthy bacteria than a pill can give you. Plus, more of these helpful bacteria reach your intestines in yogurt, than they do in pill form.
I have made both L. Reuteri and L. Gasseri (always separately). I have made the Bacillus Coagulans twice now from pills and I’m not happy with the result. I have also made a batch with BC30 in with reuteri and I may stick with that.
At approximately $30 a bottle for these probiotics I had to space my purchases out. Plus, I wanted to make sure I wanted to keep going with this experiment!
Some people recommend combining them. I don’t generally didn’t recommend that, however after making these for a year or two I start each batch with pills. I know each of the bacteria are in there. As far as just using the ends for your next batch, I usually don’t do that because I still suspect that some will out compete others. As you start creating these “yogurts” you are growing out the bacteria you’ve added over multiple generations. I believe that one will eventually out-compete the others and you will end up with only one of the three types of bacteria in your ferment. Since you can’t see or taste the difference, how would you know which strain is growing in there? This is why I now make each of my batches directly from pills. The only one I have frozen and used as a starter is the BC30. It comes out spoiled on its own. It likes a different temperature and time. So I throw a cube of the saved batch that I would not eat by itself. This insures that it’s present and I didn’t waste the spoiled batch. When I run out of the cubes I have saved, that will go in directly from pills too. I never could get a batch of only BC30 to work. It’s why I started throwing all of the different pill contents into a single batch. If you add BC30 to other probiotics it will come out correctly. That’s my recommendation.
If you want to do these separately, to keep track of the strains: I bought these colored mason jars. I’ve run them through the dishwasher and they came out undamaged. These do not have waterbath (or pressure canning) safe lids, but that’s fine because cooking this yogurt (like you do in canning) would kill the bacteria, so there’s no point to trying to can this. Plus, you can’t can most dairy anyway.
I am using blue mason jars for L Reuteri, pink for L Gasseri and green for Bacillus Coagulans
I’ve also heard not to blend these in a blender. I have no idea why that is supposed to be an issue. My original L Reuteri exploded and ended as curds and whey. I blended it back together. It worked to get the curds and whey back together but the original yogurt never set up and was a lot more tart than the second batch. BTW I used the runny mess to make the second batch so blending it didn’t stop it from fermenting further. The second batch set up like Greek yogurt and had very little tang. The L. Gasseri came out beautifully the first time I made it, so your first batch may be problematic… or it may not.
Since lots of people seem to have bad experiences (like a failure in texture and sometimes taste on the first go ’round.) I will offer my first piece of advice: only make one jar of each yogurt on your first run. You will love the second batch. The first batch was such a mess, and I had made multiple jars, that I chose to freeze what was left in two ice cube trays. When they were frozen I put the cubes in a freezer bag. This way I will have many starters and will not have to start all over with with the pills again. You can freeze this safely. But I don’t know what the time limit is for viable frozen bacteria.
For the first batch of any of the yogurts halve the regular recipe (since you are making about half of the recipe) to avoid having to eat multiple jars with messed up texture or taste. Let the inulin and half and half mixture cool below 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Add 5 crushed pills of this brand (of two L. Reuteri strains.) Or the contents of a single capsule of L Gasseri of this brand. Or this brand of Bacillus Coagulans. I don’t suggest trying BC30 by itself. I have never had it come out right without adding another type of bacteria. (Don’t add the pill casing.)
I would not try other brands. My mom made this using a cheaper substitute she found on Amazon and every batch she made failed. She ended up buying the recommended brand.
I have not had that happen with these brands. Second batch and subsequent batches for L Reuteri came out perfect. The very first batch of L Gasseri and subsequent batches have all been excellent.
So, don’t throw out your first batch even if it isn’t ideal. Expect that it may turn out runny, separated or exploded into curds and whey (and pushed out of the top of the jar) or it may come out perfectly. I believe the reason this happens is that these pills have stabilizers in them and they were not specifically created to make fermented dairy products. We’re sort of hijacking these probiotic pills and creating a higher bacterial count product. It’s also possible that the original recipe of ten crushed L Reuteri is too many. Either way, there’s a lot of failure reports in first batches of L Reuteri online.
Second, what I used to make this yogurt is an Instapot. Super easy. I bought a silicone sling to keep the jars off of the direct heat from the base. I also added water. I don’t know how other people have made these without water in the bottom. My yogurt setting switched off overnight, and dorked up the very first batch I made, when I didn’t use water. So I definitely recommend water (from about an inch up the jar to halfway up. More water will speed up when the interior comes to the correct temperature after the jars are placed in the Instapot.)
Third is the inulin (or potato starch. Both feed the probiotics and help them multiply) mixed into a few Tbsps of half and half. (add two Tbsps of inulin to each BC30 jar) I tried whisking, smashing with a rubber spatula, mashing with a spoon… I had a lot of trouble getting this to combine. It made a thick, glue at the bottom of the bowl. It was the most irritating part of making yogurt. So, I now put some half and half in a microwave safe bowl. Heat it for 1 minute and then add the inulin. This stirs together so much more easily. That particular frustration is now nonexistent. You need a Tbsps of inulin per jar that you are making.
Once your inulin is mixed up into the hot half and half, let it cool down. You can either leave it until it’s room temperature or use a thermometer and make sure the mixture’s temperature is under 105. These temperatures are good for reuteri and Gasseri. BC30 is a higher temperature ferment and it’s temperature recommendation is between 115-122. I have had several failures with this probiotic. I recommend that you only run BC30 for 24 hours or it will spoil. Like, you have to throw it out it’s so bad, spoil. You can stabilize BC30 if you add another strain. I now just put all of them together, directly from pills and I have no problems.
Then you add the content of one capsule of the L Gasseri, two capsules of the Bacillus Coagulans or five powdered chewable tablets of the L Reuteri. (The flavor of those chewables is not noticeable in the final product. Crush them in a plastic bag with a hammer or a rolling pin or use a mortar and pestle.)
Stir to combine. Then fill the jar with half and half up to include a one inch area of headspace to keep it from coming out of the jar as it ferments. Carefully stir the contents to combine.
Loosely cover your jar. You can use just the lid (not the ring, it would rust) of a canning lid, or loosely cover with a solid lid (that is just barely screwed on) to keep the moisture from dripping down into the ferment.
Next is something that will affect your yogurt, and it may be unavoidable with an Instapot. My Instapot has a yogurt setting. Some do not. Mine also has a custom temperature setting, as well as low, medium and high yogurt settings. Since this is not an actual yogurt (yogurt has to have a different bacteria to be labeled yogurt), you are heating this at a much lower temperature for a much longer time. My instapot will not set lower on the custom setting than 104°F. The “low” setting is 91°F degrees. That doesn’t make any sense to me, but for my first batch of L Reuteri I thought I’d play it safe and I used the low setting. I think that was part of what went wrong with the first batch. It was too low. I’m basically at sea level which also may affect my temperature settings versus people doing this at altitude. There is a function to set my altitude on mine but only for higher altitudes. Anyway, I have been using the 104°F custom setting ever since and it is working wonderfully. With the BC30 I had the opposite problem. 104 is too low for that bacteria. Mine was spoiled when I removed it. I tried different things to run the BC30 again and it looks like it was temperature (and that I had used a container of half and half that was open for about 4 days) were the main issues. Always start with fresh half and half, and use a second bacteria with the BC30 so it doesn’t spoil.
So, to create your first batch of either L Reuteri, L Gasseri, or Bacillus Coagulens (or if you bought one of the super pills I listed above with a huge variety of strains) I recommend a single jar per type of bacteria, but only if you want to get away from the pills and grow this out for future inoculation. If you use the pill contents each time, mixing them will not matter for a single fermentation. Heat about two cups of your half and half, either on the stove or in the microwave. Stir in the inulin until it is completely dissolved. (Don’t leave any gummy inulin in this.) add this (approximately evenly) to your mason jars. (Again, I use two Tbsps per jar with the BC30.)
Add your pills and stir until your pill contents are completely dissolved into the inulin and half and half slurry. Add more half and half into the jar to fill to the top, minus an inch for headspace. Again, carefully stir mixture together. Loosely add your lid and place jar in an instapot, yogurt maker or sous vide container with a sous vide stick. Make sure you can set whatever you are using for 36 hours, below 105° and above 98°. BC30 is higher. It needs to be 115-122°F. Even if you use pills every time, you are still growing more of these strains than just taking a single pill. It’s still cost effective.
Let it run.
Now this is a key piece of advice I have: You are running this for two and a half days. That means if you start this at 3 pm, 36 hours later you will be getting up at 3am to remove the yogurt and put it in your refrigerator. Decide on a time to start this (it only takes about 5 minutes to get everything ready for fermentation.) that you won’t mind taking it out at the opposite time of day. Last night I was up until midnight. Started a batch, I thought I’d be pulling it out at noon (36 hours later) Unfortunately, I did not consider the time to bring the jar to the correct temperature. It adds about four hours. My suggestion is to bring the half and half up to temperature in a pan, or microwave, before adding it to the jar or at least wait until it is at room temperature before you start.
If you end up with the yogurt setting up but it is obviously spoiled (It will be super obvious. If it smells rotten I do NOT advise tasting it to make sure. If it smells bad, it is bad, and it will be so disgusting that you are going to not only spit your sample out, but run for the nearest sink to repeatedly rinse that out of your mouth!) make sure that you sterilized everything before you started. Your dishwasher is not an autoclave, so I don’t recommend trying to sanitize that way, but if it works for you, then it’s definitely an option.
In an instapot just run the jars lids and sling in water on a pressure setting for one minute. That one easy, quick thing can be the difference between spoiled nasty cheesy yuck and delicious yogurt. If, after several attempts you cannot get the BC30 to make right, you always have the option to add it to one of the other ferments. But, you will need to start batches from scratch once every 4 or 5 batches to make sure you still have a good balance between the two strains.
Lastly, if your first jar ends up being a mess, start another batch with two tablespoons from your first batch. Use the curds, whey…the mixed runny mess: Does not matter (unless you heated Gasseri and reuteri higher than 110 or BC30 over 122. Then you likely killed all of the bacteria.) The second one will not end up looking or tasting like your first batch. This time, make two or three mason jars (our family of four is eating both L Reuteri and L Gasseri daily. We’ll be starting with the Bacillus Coagulans in another week or so. We go through quite a bit. Thankfully it’s super easy to make.)
If you are intent on deviating from the above recipe, your batches will likely fail. Use ultra pasturized half and half with no thickeners added. You do not have to heat ultra pasturized half and half to kill competing bacteria, you can use half and half straight from the container it came in, but only if it’s been ultra pasturized. You do have to heat milk up, so this is not the right recipe for milk. Plus, finished yogurt made with milk will be runnier. Most heavy cream has thickener. Heavy cream makes something similar to butter.
So to go over the instructions below:
Don’t use off brand pills. Don’t give up on, or throw away your first batch. Don’t overheat this. Don’t mix globby inulin into the jars. Don’t cut the time short because you miscalculated your end time. It’s OK to fudge the time by a couple of hours but I would recommend putting it in at a time you can easily take it out instead. Do freeze curds and whey into ice cubes to easily start new batches, even if you don’t like the first batch. I don’t even clean the jars between batches. You are using starter from the last jar anyway.
There’s more things NOT to do than there are instructions for making this correctly. Once you make this you will realize how easy this is. It’s easy to mix, it’s easy to ferment, it’s wonderful to eat. (I eat mine with keto granola and some vanilla Stevia. It’s incredible and I’m addicted!)
A couple of answers in case you wonder: if you make too much and the jars won’t all fit in your instapot can you refrigerate this and use what is left in the next batch? Yes. My Instapot will hold three quarts and a pint jar. I accidentally made enough for four quarts. It’s fine if you screw up like this. Just put a lid on it and put it in the fridge for the next batch.
Can you make two different types of yogurt, in separate jars at once? Yes, for reuteri and Gasseri, especially yes for BC30. I heat some half and half, stir in the inulin, add a little of the slurry to four mason jars and then pour the whey (the watery part) from the last batches into two of the jars, then add the whey from the other type to the two remaining jars. You don’t need to be exact, but try to aim for about two Tbsps per jar of whey, curds or yogurt from the last jars. This is where either using colored jars or sleeves like these: mason jar sleeves is helpful.
If I don’t have enough space for four quarts in my choice of heating container is there another size jar I can try? Yes! There are 24 oz mason jars that are tall and narrow. I can easily fit four in my Instapot. Other options are three quarts and one pint. Make sure you test your heating container before you make all of the jars or you may end up with one in the fridge.
I hope this answers any questions you might have about making L Reuteri, L Gasseri or Bacillus Coagulens fermented dairy. It is so delicious and I have seen amazing improvements in my skin, my sleep, energy and with the L Gasseri I’m losing weight. Yay! Plus, as school is about to start up, we’ll see about the bacteriocins and general immunity improvement in my kids.
In general, making and eating fermented foods will help with your gut biome. Some of my personal favorite ferments and their recipes are below:
Another cool thing about ferments is they are a natural source of vitamin K. (If you are on Coumadin ask your doctor before trying fermented food.)
If you are new to L Reuteri, L Gasseri or Bacillus Coagulens here are some great medical studies and other reports about all three bacterium:
Places to visit to research: L Reuteri, BC30 Bacillus Coagulens or L Gasseri
LACTOBACILLUS REUTERI
Interesting Research:
Gundry MD benefits and history
One person’s research 12 benefits
Scientific journals:
LACTOBACILLUS GASSERI
Interesting Research:
Bacillus Coagulens
Scientific journals:
General Probiotic Scientific Journal Entries:
The Royal Society of Chemistry
If you want something that explains a lot of problems that cluster around mental health issues and gut health or physical illness and gut health I recommend reading both:
And
Both by Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride.
I discovered these books years ago and altered my diet accordingly. It has been a huge help.
I hope you enjoy these recipes. Once you make them you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to have continuous supplies of fresh homemade “yogurt”.
Meet you out in the garden, with our bowls of fresh yogurt!
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Interesting!
LOVE this, thank you so much!!
You are very welcome!