The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Recipes => Topic started by: little blue on June 18, 2011, 04:10:49 pm
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butter from goats' milk...
can I skim the cream from pasteurised goats milk to collect for butter making?
when we bottle the pasteurised milk, the cream rises to the top & blocks the neck of the bottle anyway!
please help, I really want to make my own butter, but it has to be very simple!! ::)
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I don't see why you couldn't. I have never tried it with pasturised milk, but it should work the same. Goats milk butter is lovely, and very simple.
Beth
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Make some Little Blue and let us know how it turns out......I have a yearning to make butter too :) Years ago, when I was visiting relations in Ireland, everyone seemed to make their own butter (and bread and scones!) and laid out the table at each house we visited. The butter was lovely!!!
I do have an enormous butter churn. My mum said she used to stand for hours turning the handle making butter at the farm, when she was young. Not sure I have the time to stand for hours nowadays, unfortunately!!
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I used to stand and make butter once a week when I was young it was very relaxing. I am on a mission to promote the old crafts again and get some self sufficiency and knowledge back into our communities. I think too much is now being forgotten or people just feel like they don't have time anymore but it is amazing what you can find the time for when you try.
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My husband used to be given a large jam jar with cream in it to shake as a child to make butter, so you can do it on a much smaller scale. I have tried saving the cream from the top of our goat milk but I don't get enough in several days to cover the fresh strawberries let alone make butter, but it is on my 'to do' wish list. Good luck and keep us informed.
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oh... not sure I can take the pressure, you all have such high expectations! ;)
can I just say, I'm still struggling to adapt to baking with duck eggs & different sized chicken eggs, so please be patient!
:D
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little blue when baking weigh your eggs first and then the dry ingredients to the same weight ;)
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cheer Padge, I'll try that.
should I weigh them whole or broken?!
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The difficulty with making butter from goat's milk is getting the cream in the first place. It just doesn't rise in the same way that it does in cow's milk. To make any quantity of butter from goats you really need to run the milk through a seperator.
Having said that, give it a go, you will get a bit.
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do you think if you just churned the milk without separating it, you would eventually get butter anyway?
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Probably, but it would be such a titchy amount that it wouldn't be worth the effort
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Do you think this calculation re quantities of butter is sort of correct?
Butter has 80% butterfat in it, my goatsmilk has currently 3% butterfat (I milk record), so 1ltr milk has 30g of fat, equating to 36g of butter? So if I were to put 10ltrs of milk through a separator I would get 360g of butter????
In reality - How much butter do people get from a litre of milk?
We are trying to develop our "disposal-of-milk-not-involving-just-down-the-sink" strategy, and I currently get 11ltrs of milk a day and the (goat)kids are now weaned.... but the cost of a separator is just a wee bit on the high side...
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We are trying to develop our "disposal-of-milk-not-involving-just-down-the-sink" strategy
is :pig: :pig: :pig: :pig: :pig: :pig: ;D ;D ;D
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anke we've made some ice cream and also cheese - if that helps.....
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Get a good amount of cream from Jalaini's milk, have you thought about trying to do clotted cream you don't separate till after i'll sort you some instructions.
like ellisr I am trying to promote old crafts and have just finished running a course in my local area called grandmas ways for modern days it was great!!! I make my butter from reduced supermarket cream the nearer the sell by date the better and i use a 4 pint plastic milk bottle as a churn ;D ;D
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Anke, your calcs look about right to me.
My milking, skimming and butter-making is all by hand and rough-and-ready, plus the Jersey milk is very very rich and creamy, of course. I take 2-2.5 L of milk a day, mostly skim the cream off for butter, make butter every other day or so in a jam jar.
I don't know if you've had a go at making butter from your goats' milk yet? If not, I would urge you to have an experimental go and see just how much you like the butter - and what you feel about the amount of work it is - before splashing out on equipment. Even with a seperator and an electric churn, there's still a lot of washing and working the butter to get the buttermilk and then the water out and stop it getting an 'off' taint very quickly. Because I only make enough for a day or two (for two of us) at a time, it doesn't really have a chance to get very 'off', but if you are making nearly a pound a day you will need it properly cleaned (or all be happy to have that hint of sourness in your butter.)
I didn't ever expect that I would make all our butter, I thought it would be special occasions only. But we both love it so much we couldn't bear to go back to shop-bought manufactured pale tasteless stuff! I even use it for cooking - I can't bring myself to pick up the shop-bought manufactured pale tasteless stuff and sully a cake with it.
I will need to get a supply of well-cleaned stuff stocked up in the freezer for lambing, though... ;)