Homemade Cultured Butter from Cultured Goat Milk

Even though I am actively praying and looking for a cream separator, I wanted to give making cultured butter from whole milk one more try before I threw up my hands and declared it was not possible or not worth the effort. Truthfully, I still feel the yield is too low to make it worthwhile, but this time (as opposed to last time), I am sure that I did it right and got the most possible butter I could out of the milk I cultured.

Jerri at Homesteader Supply shared this technique with me. It works, it really does. And the butter is to-die-for! Wow! From a quart of cultured milk, I got 4 tablespoons of butter. Not alot. But super duper good butter, even so! It gets me excited that if I ever get a cream separator, I’ll be able to use this process with great yields – because I’ll start with cream instead of milk.

What’s happening with this method is that instead of taking straight cream and turning it into butter (culturing is optional), you take whole milk, culture it, and churn the milk – but because the milk is only  4 to 5 percent cream, that’s all that turns into butter. The rest you capture and save to use later, as cultured milk.

The Recipe: Cultured Butter from Cultured Goat Milk (Not Cream)

Yield: about 1/4 cup of butter from 1 quart of milk, depending on butterfat content of your milk.

Take one quart of raw goat milk, its temperature doesn’t matter. (I used milk still warm from milking.) Add about 1/8 teaspoon of mesophilic MM or mesophilic MA culture. Mix it up so the culture distributes fully. Cover with a cloth and secure with rubber band or ribbon. Leave out until thick, about 24 hours. It should taste like sour cream. Transfer to refrigerator to chill all the way.

Put 2 cups of the cultured milk in mixing bowl of mixer or in blender (don’t use a Vita-Mix, it will get hot). Add 1 cup of cold water. Turn on mixer or blender and let it run. In my Bosch on speed 3, I had to let it run 20 minutes while watching for clumps of solids floating in liquid. If it is pasty, not solid, let it go longer. When the butter solids are formed, pour all the contents through a fine strainer, catching the liquid in a bowl beneath. Save the liquid for later use, for soaking or baking.

Wash the butter solids under cold running water. It will thicken and harden from the cold water. Rinse until water runs clear. Transfer to a bowl and mash it with a spoon to release the rest of the water. When no more water comes out, the butter is done. Salt to taste and store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

About Goat’s Milk and Separating Cream

I’ve been researching this – hoping for a non-mechanical solution to getting cream from our goat’s milk. But I’m not finding anything useful. At Mother Earth News, a writer suggested putting a gallon of milk in a shallow pan in the refrigerator for 24 hours to allow cream to rise to the surface. I would love to do this, but I have not the fridge space. Other methods that work for cow’s milk, where the cream rises to the surface of whatever jar and gives inches of cream, do not work for goat’s milk. This is because goat’s milk is naturally homogenized – the fat particles are the same size as the rest and they stay mixed together.

So I am waiting for a cream separator. Actually, I’m waiting for a good deal on one and antique is fine as long as there are no tin parts! I prefer a hand crank, just cuz someday I might not have much electricity available. If anyone wants to buy me one, I won’t refuse.