Left some kefir grains in the fridge for a few weeks...

[morganm]

Someone on Facebook was nice enough to share their milk kefir grains with me. They sent them via mail in a padded envelope in a little tiny tupperware container in some milk. It's winter here so I'm assuming most of the time it was pretty cold. May have experienced some temp fluctuations in sorting centers and such.

I haven't had time to deal with them so I left them in the same milk and container they came in. They've been in my fridge for almost 3 weeks now. Looking at the container... it's pretty thick stuff now!

Questions:
Did I ruin them?
Is it OK to leave them in the same milk, in the fridge, for this long?
Do I need to 'revitilize' them or anything before I make a batch of kefir?

Please advise; thanks!

[morganm]

Follow up... answered my own questions =)

They were fine. First batch was gross; tossed it. After that it went well. Been drinking kefir from these grains for a week now and it's been awesome!

Man I haven't had REAL dairy in .... many years. It's so amazing. Been eating it in smoothies and on plain rice cereal.

[Christopher Weeks]

Neat!

I was hoping someone would get to your question, but I've never done kefir. I've been listening to the Fermup podcast though, and it sounds like from what Brandon says on that show, that abused kefir grains will often recover if you start using them right again -- but take a couple batches of fresh milk before they're tip-top.