Sorry, no pictures. But trust me when I say this has been an adventure. A month or so ago, a friend encouraged us to actually spend money on something moderately frivolous. Truth be told, we're total and complete tightwads so this is something that takes a bit of arm twisting. We were thinking of the 2 gallons/day of milk we'd be getting with both Dulci and Helen in milk, our nice tax non-return (which I find ridiculous that we should get paid that much money merely for having kids) and decided it was time for a cream separator.
Now let me give some information here. Unlike cow's milk, goat's milk does not naturally separate. You can wait all week and not get more than a teaspoon of cream rising to the top of a quart of milk. Centrifuge is the only way to really get goat cream.
It arrived on Tuesday afternoon so Wednesday I was chomping at the bit to use it. 6 hours post-milking I had a half pint of cream, a very sore arm and shoulder, and an ENORMOUS mess. It was a disaster. I decided separating was not something for me to do alone.
This morning, after chores, Superhusbandman cranked while I poured. We still splattered milk all over the kitchen. We separated about 1.5 gallons and put the pint of cream in the blender. And blended. And blended. And blended. And got cream.
And now its late and we're due to be leaving soon to pick up our bees (another post for another day) so let me just say that another 5 hours of separating and blending and we still only have cream, but are hopeful for another go at butter.
But not today.
Just reading about your life makes my arm tired. How on earth do you do all this?
ReplyDeleteHeard from a friend who's been living this lifestyle for years that it's totally not worth trying to make butter out of goat's milk - actually or cow's milk either. She said just buy organic butter. She's says she's tried every which a way, but it just takes too much cream and too much work.
ReplyDeleteAra
you may be right. :-(
ReplyDeleteShe is not right. I have made butter out of my goat's milk and I actually did it with the little bit that does seperate at the top. I had Saanen goats, which is more like cow's milk than any other goat, but I just took the cream from the top of the milk after about a day and put it in a jar and froze it, until I had enough for butter. Then I just used a hand mixer with cookie hooks of all things and a stainless steel bowl and made butter. I rinsed it, salted it and it was wonderful.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it, with a little patience and trial and error. I'll try to find the pics of my goat's milk butter in my archives and share them with you. Doable...definitely doable.
Here is a link where I talk about it at least.
ReplyDeletehttp://pithycraggle.blogspot.com/2008/05/neccesity-truly-is-mother-of-invention.html