Growing probiotics in home-made yogurt

[mediumwhite]

Hi All,

I make yogurt and Kefir at home, which involved simply adding a bacterial starter to some milk, then leaving it at 32°C-ish for a few hours, (or a day in the case of Kefir) inside an incubator.

I see that the starter cultures usually contain some of the following probiotic species: Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, Lactococcus lactis, and others.

I wondered if there is a way to add other probiotic species such as L.Reuteri, or L. Rhamnosus. Can I just empty out the contents of a probiotic capsule into the milk as I do with the starters?

Are there any risks in doing that?

Thanks for any useful insight.

[StringJunky]

You might find this following thread link useful. It seems the yoghurt is initially inoculated with Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus themophilus, which multiply and give the yoghurt its taste. The rest are added later on at the necessary concentration because they do not multiply in the yoghurt. You'd have to know how many you were putting in for them to be useful.

Have a read of the first post: https://www.quora.com/What-happens-to-the-bacteria-in-yogurt-as-yogurt-expires

Note that he highlights this:

Quote

In most commercial yogurt other bacterial species / strains are present , like Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, several Bifidobacter specis/strains. These are added in very high numbers ( about 10^6–7/ml ) prior to breaking the gel and mixed well. They can not grow competitively well with the two yoghurt culture bacteria; so they are not added initially. The objective of adding them is just to stay alive in yogurt ( not to multiply).

 

Edited February 1, 2019 by StringJunky

[PhilGeis]

Counts in commercial yogurt are often not stable - to the extent the strains as viable counts are actually "probiotic" in you, the numbers are likely too low to be effective.

Edited February 2, 2019 by PhilGeis