SIBO / L Reuteri ‘Yogurt’ Success

SIBO / L Reuteri ‘Yogurt’ Success

It took a few goes but I have finally mastered the SIBO / L Reuteri ‘Yogurt’.  As a seasoned fermented I did not expect it to be as hard to figure out as it was!

I think what makes, making this ‘yogurt’ challenging is that the recipe/directions are different for you depending on what you have available in your part of the world, what kind of yogurt making device you have and how warm/cold it is in your part of the world right now.

For me here in Portugal I can’t get ‘half n half’, so after some experimenting, I found I can make it with full fat/whole UHT milk instead.  You cannot use things like raw milk (unfortunately), as the strains of good probiotics in the raw milk are stronger than those of the L Reuteri, so you won’t get the yogurt you are after.

Here’s what used and what I did…

• 1L of whole/ full fat milk (preferably UHT if living in Europe or Half n Half if in the USA)
• 1x level tbsp of Inulin (I got mine HERE)
• 2 tbsp of previous batch (in the first batch I used a L Reuteri sachet starter from Dr William Davis’ website HERE)

• I sterilised the yogurt jars
• Add a little of the UHT to the starter and Inulin and mix well.  If you use raw or not highly pasteurised milk like UHT you will need to warm the milk through at this stage and then let it cool again to highly pasteurised it.
• Then I added all the other milk and mixed again
• I poured this mixture into my glass yogurt pots, put the lids on and added these to my yogurt maker (my yogurt maker it HERE)
• I filled the yogurt maker with water and put the lid on
• I set the yogurt maker to 36 degrees (I realised 37, which is the normal temperature for making this yogurt was just too hot here in the summer months as the outside temp is already insanely hot) and then set it for 36 hours
• After 36 hours I put yogurt pots in the fridge to set

The first batch I made split, and I thought I’d done something wrong, but it seems this happens with most people and that it’s still OK to eat and to use as a started for the following batch.  The following two batches split also, but that’s when I realised, I was using too much Inulin (as many people say to use 2x tbsp) and the temp was just a little high.  So, I reduced both and now I have perfect yogurt goodness.  And even though I am not using half n half, the yogurt it still nice and thick and tastes lovely.

I kept some of my first ‘dodgy’ batch in the fridge and have been using this as a starter for all the other for many weeks now, once this runs out I’ll just save another one in the fridge and so on.

You can keep using some of the yogurt from the previous batch until it does not taste sour anymore, then it’s time to use a new starter sachet.  I’m told this can take over 100 batches though.

A note on L Reuteri:  Even if you have only had 1 lot of antibiotics in your life you won’t have any of this particular good bacteria left in your digestive system and if you have had ongoing digestive issues, then more than 50% of you will have SIBO.  This ‘yogurt’ will help repopulate your L Reuteri and with most people clears up SIBO.

A note on probiotics in general:  I see MANY people state they are pointless as they are ‘burned’ up in the stomach where they are needed.  However not all probiotics are, especially if consumed on top of other foods. BUT, this is not the only place we need probiotics.  In fact they are just as (if not more important) higher up in the digestive system.  It’s the good bacteria higher up in the digestive system that signals the gut lining for instance what to do with what is on it’s way down.  So, if you don’t have certain strains of good bacteria highly up then the gut does not know what to do with what comes down into and may let toxins into areas they should not be.

This blog is super helpful by Cultured Food Life too (it’s explains many different ways you can make this ‘yogurt’.  https://www.culturedfoodlife.com/l-reuteri-superfood-starter-faqs/