Cultures for Health Skyr Icelandic Starter Culture | 2 Heirloom Mesophilic Packets for DIY Probiotic Skyr | Gut-Health Boost – No Maker Required

Contents of package: -Instruction booklet -2 pouches of dry starter (One pouch made enough starter for two half gallon batches of Skyr, or enough to make one batch and make more starter) -2 rennet tablets (Each half gallon batch uses 1/4 of a tablet) Pros: -Quality output, once directions were figured out following them resulted in very good results. I'm not personally familiar with what Skyr 'should' taste like mind you, but I got a wonderful creamy yogurt with a bit of tang that my grandmother compared to cream cheese. Cons: -I found the directions to be slightly unclear at first. The directions are broken into two sections but not labeled in a way to clearly lay that out. The first set is to rehydrate and 'wake up' your starter, and the second set is to prep the half gallon of milk to make the actual batch of yogurt. -I love that the rennet tablets are marked and ready to be quartered, but I found that due to the nature of the tablet it's hard to ensure you break it quite right and I ended up with some fragmented extra bits I then had to store for my next batch. The tablets did the job great though that's just a minor critique. Curiosity: I notice many recipe online for Skyr call for heating the milk up to 190F before letting it cool back down slowly to 90-100F. This supposedly helps arrange some milk proteins into a more yogurt friendly configuration but the instructions included skip this step. That said following the instructions included resulted in a delicious yogurt but I intend to try the extra step later to see how it impacts the result.

Being very fortunate to get a weekly supply of fresh, grass-fed milk from a nearby farmer and using starter cultures from this company, I had been making ‘the best of the best’ yogurt and kefir for many years. Last year my local health food retailer began to sell Icelandic Skyr, which I really loved but as it only came in an individual serving size, it is cost prohibitive to enjoy very often. Several years ago, I purchased the 'Heirloom variety pack' which contains three different Mesophilic (countertop culturing) yogurt cultures from this company and had great success with them. Skyr wasn’t well known in the US at the time, and they did not offer it. But hoping this had changed, a few weeks ago I decided to see if they now make a Skyr culture and was thrilled to find that they do! Skyr is mild tasting and a bit runny in consistency but depending on how much whey you drain from it, it can become not only a great ‘Greek style’ yogurt, but delicious sour cream (with no cream required) and ultimately a fabulous cream cheese! I cannot recommend this company highly enough and that is most surely true of their relatively 'new kid on the block' – Islandic Skyr!

Unfortunately I have had rotten luck with all of the cultures for health products I’ve tried. The texture isn’t right after multiple batches and I’ve ended up giving up. I have more consistent results cloning store-bought cultures.

While some of the other reviews lament the fact that rennet isn't included in the packet, rennet isn't needed and isn't used traditionally (yes, it can be used if you aren't getting a thick enough result - but straining/draining it in a cheesecloth bag for a few hours will have the same effect.) I added the cultures to a pint of milk and left it out on the counter for about 36 hours. The end result was, yes, slightly runny. However, from what I can see this is meant to be a starter for skyr - not skyr itself. The following day I made a batch of skyr using the starter I made with this product. Brought the milk slowly up to 200°F and kept it there for 10 minutes. After that, I let it cool down to 110°F, added the starter, and let it sit out on the counter covered with cheesecloth for about 12 hours. It turned out far better than the skyr I had been making which initially used Siggi's as a starter. The flavor was tangy, as it should be, and the consistency after letting it drain with cheesecloth (about 4 hours) was almost perfect and I could turn the spoon upside down without the skyr immediately running off. The only issue I had had nothing to do with the cultures. Both batches of skyr I made were tainted with yeast, as I had also been doing a bunch of baking. My previous batch (the Siggi's starter batch) had been running for almost a month and a half. So if you take anything from this review, do NOT make any bread while culturing or inoculating your yogurt (regular, Greek, skyr, or otherwise.)

Easy and delicious. I make this in the instapost. I just save some plain from each batch to inoculate the next. So this product actually allows you to make more and more

I made curd out of this culture , good for gut health. Only eating this curd these days.

This is a very healthy product. This has all the original, natural, healthy minersls in it that reg table salt has processed out of it I never knew this fact before.

Not sure about this yogurt culture - made very runny yogurt - and I’ve been making it for years. Better to just get some fresh already cultured and made stuff from the store