Home-made yoghurt or cheese

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peds

Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by peds » Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:56 pm

Now, you don't get a very strong percentage with either of these home-brews (unless you've done it quite badly wrong), but has anyone got any knowledge of making your own dairy? Things like natural yoghurt, or soft cheeses like ricotta, or labneh, or Canadian curds, or Greek-style yoghurt, or maybe even just butter?

I thought I'd make more of a general thread, but just on the off-chance that there are any yoghurt-knitters here, I actually have a specific question: sometimes, the supermarket I use most often has milk reduced to about 30% cost the day before it's sell by date. The milk itself often lasts for quite a few days after that of course. Do you think this might affect the longevity of whatever final product you might make with it?

crafty john

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by crafty john » Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:55 pm

I can't answer your question about sell by dates but I do make my own butter out of double cream, it is lovely and so easy, just put the cream in my kenwood chef with the k beater with and turn it on and wait for it to turn lumpy then just drain and pat into a block, a bit of salt helps too. I have used out of date cream with no problems.

peds

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by peds » Sat Oct 12, 2013 9:07 am

That's great, cheers for the response CJ. I'll give something a go the next time there's a glut of cheap milk, the worst that could happen is I end up throwing away a fiver.

I'm in France and, unfortunately, all the cream is UHT and sold in tiny cartons - no pint containers of fresh cream to make butter with. It's one of the main failings of this place as a country.

I remember back in school, in year three, we were handed a big jar half-filled with full-cream milk, and twenty of us 6 year olds shook it for about fifteen minutes and ended up with a couple of tablespoons of butter. You'd need... nearly fourteen thousand children to make this plan commercially viable.

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6470zzy
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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by 6470zzy » Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:32 am

peds wrote: just on the off-chance that there are any yoghurt-knitters here, I actually have a specific question: sometimes, the supermarket I use most often has milk reduced to about 30% cost the day before it's sell by date. The milk itself often lasts for quite a few days after that of course. Do you think this might affect the longevity of whatever final product you might make with it?
The milk will be fine for the making of yoghurt. Take a litre of milk full fat milk, heat it to 82C then rapidly cool it down to 42C, then either inoculate it with dried yoghurt culture or mix a cup of the milk with half a cup of room temperature commercial plain yoghurt and inoculate the milk with that. Keep the pan covered with a tea towel in a warm location for 8 hours and you should have success.

Cheers
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peds

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by peds » Sun Oct 13, 2013 8:36 pm

That's great, cheers for the response Ozzy. I'll give it a go next time there's a glut of milk.

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domejunky
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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by domejunky » Tue Oct 15, 2013 2:02 pm

Check out Frank Hauser's pages...

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/cheese.html

Everything I needed to get started making yogurt and cheese. I set myself the challange of a cheese and pickle sandwich and a beer - all made by my own fair hands. Even used a barm-sourdough from US-05

Pete

peds

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by peds » Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:13 am

Nice one DJ, that's a great link.

BerLov

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by BerLov » Mon Feb 24, 2014 4:18 pm

I tried to make home yogurt but it was tasteless. manufactured ones are much more delicious

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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by MashTim » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:25 am

BerLov wrote:I tried to make home yogurt but it was tasteless. manufactured ones are much more delicious
Have you tried easiyo, a bit easier than complete DIY yoghurt. I've been eating gallons of it since the middle of last year all far tastier than shop bought and cheaper too, I only 'brew' the natural greek style and add my own fruit and maple syrup.

Does anyone know if you can use some of the easiyo as a starter for using with milk.

Subsonic

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by Subsonic » Fri Sep 19, 2014 9:52 pm

I've got a yoghurt maker and the best milk of all is UHT full fat plus a live yoghurt. Try it and you won't be disapointed. I made yoghurt for years in the UK and they were 'OK'. Now in France I realise the UHT is king, let's face it, its fcuk all use for anything else. Sub

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6470zzy
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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by 6470zzy » Fri Sep 19, 2014 10:38 pm

BerLov wrote:I tried to make home yogurt but it was tasteless. manufactured ones are much more delicious
How did you make it? What did you use for a culture?
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wmk

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by wmk » Fri Oct 31, 2014 3:37 pm

I make all my own yoghurt (a habit I inherited from my mum). Simply buy a tub of greek style bio/live yoghurt as culture one you like the taste of and you're all set.
No need for a yoghurt maker, simply heat your milk until it is sanitized (my mum takes it to boil 3 times, I simply let it simmer at about 65celcius for 10 minutes in a double boiler). Allow to cool to about room temp and pitch a spoonful of yoghurt.

I've done this with skimmed, semi, and full fat milk. With goats milk. and even using actimel as the culture (produced runny yoghurt :/).

I leave it in my airying cupboard over night covered with a lid and blanket. Maintains temps around 25°C.

It can be strained if required I eat it as is, or mixed with jam.

It should be fine with near sell-by-dates. In fact if I have any milk approaching that date I make it into yoghurt! Yoghurt has a long life for the same reasons beer does. We sanitize it then effectively make it go off in a particular fashion we like (using lacto bacteria for yoghurt and yeast for beer). The end result is a low pH product with little to no simple sugars.

Making cheese: I make a passable soft cheese like Philadelphia and a poor mozzarella like cheese using lemons to curdle the milk. It's tasty but nothing special. I do have rennet in the fridge but I've never gotten around to using it, lemons work too well for me.

As a word of warning, I always keep my yoghurt making stuff away from my beer making stuff. Not that I've ever had a problem but lacto is generally unwanted in non-lambic beers.

If you want to combine your two interests, fermenting to alcohol and making yoghurt why not try Kefir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir) it uses yeast and bacteria cultures (flocculated into a ball or gelatinous biofilm) to produce an alcoholic milky/yoghurt drink. I've dabbled a bit in it but the difficulty in getting a good kefir strain in the uk and the fact that I hate the taste and it gives me a belly ache (expected until you consume a great deal of it) but me off.

Edit: I'll upload an album of a yoghurt/cheese run I did last year when I get home.
Here it is: http://imgur.com/a/17Tmu

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Laripu
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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by Laripu » Sat Feb 07, 2015 2:43 am

A few years ago I used to make chevre, soft white goat cheese. I found some people nearby that had goats, fed them organic alfalfa, and sold very tasty goat milk.

I bought 2 (US) gallons at a time, lightly pasteurized it, added rennet and bacteria and left it overnight. The next morning I cut the curds, and hung it in a cheese cloth for 4 hours to drain the whey. (Which was drunk by myself, Mrs Laripu, and our two dogs.)

The drained cheese was salted, packed into glass containers, and refrigerated. It was good to eat the next day. Two US gallons made about 5 lbs of cheese, roughly 2250g.
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Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by Doingatun » Sat Feb 07, 2015 2:41 pm

I've been making my own plain yoghurt for a while now, we really enjoy it with various fruits or purées. Bought an inexpensive yoghurt maker, which basically heats a 1L container of prepared milk with a small amount of fresh bought live yoghurt or from previous batch, holds it at around 46c. I like to start with a bought live yoghurt every 6 or so batches. After 8 hours I have a litre of delicious plain yoghurt as nice or better than premium brands, at a quarter of the cost, with no additives. So far, used full fat and semi skimmed which makes a slightly thinner yoghurt, both have to be sterilised by a short simmer, I've yet to try UHT which only has to be heated to 46c.
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nursebetty

Re: Home-made yoghurt or cheese

Post by nursebetty » Wed May 27, 2015 2:20 pm

I make butter every now and again and with all different flavours
I also use my food blender and you can use a food mixer and dump the butter into a bowl of ice water and squeeze to get rid of the juice
Cottage Cheese I made years ago but to be honest I am not a lover of the stuff and the smell is bad
I sometimes make yogurt for my husband using Kefer which you can buy on EBay
You just add hand full of the Kefer to a cup or jug milk sit it on windowsill and few days later you have yogurt.
Remove the Kefer from the jug via a sieve and the plain yogurt you can add any flavours or fruit, I sweetened with honey.

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