Kiefer chaos catastrophe

Okay so apparently my water kiefer decided to explode despite my burping it. I was unable to salvage much of the grains from the ceiling and the books that are now a sticky mess. Not to mention the shrapnel of broken glass from the Mason jar that's everywhere. And on top of that the past two days my goat's milk kefir has been smelling off and the grains have been turning brown and shriveled instead of saying plump and white the company says it's because they use raw goat's milk now rather than sticking with the store-bought kind that I activated it with. So now I am basically out of fermentations aside from kimchi and some sauerkraut and I've had a couple of big messes to clean up I hope everyone else is fermentation adventures have been going better than mine this week!

Wow, you must have some seriously powerful critters growing!!
Do you have some abrupt temperature changes happening? Breaking a mason jar is some pretty hardcore business. I don't think I've ever seen kefir overflow, so if I had it in mason jars i think i would just leave the lid very loosely on, not closed per se but able to vent. When I have grown it I've just covered it with a cloth, like i do my kombucha.

As for your milk kefir- I am not sure I agree about the raw milk vs the pasteurized (or whatever), of course the company will not encourage you to use raw and probably feels bound to say that. It could be that there was some other bacteria that got in there, I have had both kinds of kefir sort of poop out unexpectedly when I made it. Not sure if it was contamination or maybe their life cycle was just done (had the same happen with yogurt, after a while it just didn't work right anymore and I needed to get a new starter going). The kefir was sort of a relief for me, since the grains were multiplying so much and I was having a hard time keeping up....
Happy cleaning and at least the next ferment is never far away!

Ugh. I had a glass growler explode one time. It was on the floor under the kitchen table, so vertical mess was contained at least. The stickiness is awful.

A ginger bug is a nice easy thing to get going. Some ginger beer is what exploded on me, so burp regularly.

Thanks for the support folks it was beyond crazy losing two types of kefir in one day I have put some of the salvage water kefir grains in about a cup of sugar water and do see a few bubbles this morning so I guess all is not lost I'm really hoping that I can revive and regrow them because we go through between a half or a quart and a half gallon of water key for a day it's kind of our staple hot weather drink.