Fresh milk questions

Beware. . .in our experience after you fill the jug up eight (8) to ten (10) times the spigot starts to leak. Makes a mess in the ice box. . .

YMMV

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Also when making butter be sure to leave plenty of space in the jar for the cream to slosh around. I like to fill the jar only halfway full but you should leave at *least* a 1/4 of the jar empty for slosh room. This really cuts down on how much time it will take to make butter.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

If you have a food processor, that is a slick way to make butter. I skim our Jersey milk after it separates, save cream for 4-5 days maximum. Put warm cream in processor and turn it on! Voila! Butter in 5 minutes.

I just found this out

Is there anyway to keep this from happening?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMrK...AE7062ADE5A19C

I want to thank you all for your help. I ended up using the food processor for about 5 minutes, then pouring back in the jar and sloshing for a few minutes to gather the bits of butter together. I rinsed and rinsed, added a little salt (probably at the wrong time) and served immediately. It was delicious! Now I have all this buttermilk to make raisin bread with! I'm stoked! We love the taste of the milk now with the cream removed. I don't think I'll ever go back to store-bought!

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We get raw milk from a farmer in the area, and that milk lasts at least 10 days (that's as long as we've had it around here). Another family we know used to go up to the farm only every 2 weeks, so I'm guessing theirs may have lasted at least that long.

I've seen this farmer's milking and sanitation practices - he keeps things really clean. That must have something to do with it. It's packaged in 1/2 gallon plastic jugs like you get at the store, and I think they come sterilized from the manufacturer.

We used to get milk from a different farm in 1/2 gallon glass jars - that milk lasted a long time too. On the rare occasion that it was around long enough to sour, I would just use it for cooking.

Jen

Keep drinking the whole milk and you will become used to it. Fresh whole milk is all we ever drank when I was a kid and taste or heaviness was never a problem. That anemic stuff they call whole milk at the store is too thin IMO.
Of course grabbing a bit of cream to make butter is a good idea for the time being.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

I've heard that that milk in the store would kill a calf.

My fresh milk has kept for two weeks in our fridge at 34 degrees. [You'll need to put a thermometer in there to check temp out from time to time.] It's still sweet enough to not taste bad even then...and I'm really picky about the taste of milk. Always chill within the hour after drawing the milk. Use only stainless steel for processing. I use glass and plastic containers ...you just need to be sure you use a lot of suds on the plastic when cleaning.

I do NOT pasteurize, but use 16 drops of grapeFRUIT seed extract in each gallon rather than pasteurizing. Cannot be tasted at that rate.

We drink it with or without the cream, with no complaints.

Butter? I like it, but my husband says the taste is too strong...he's used to that market junk. I was able to get a gallon electric churn two years ago at a consignment shop for a few bucks. Till then, I was just shaking it up in a 1/2 gal. jar 2/3ds full at temp around 65 degrees is best. It generally comes in about 20-30 minutes. I never could get it to work with my mixer or blender!

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I used to use the "sun tea" jars with a spigot to get the cream off, but had the leaks as reported as well.

I was a miserable failure with the ladle method and kept getting too much milk in my cream. So... I switch to using a turkey baster to slurp the cream off the top - works great so far. I'm worried about bacteria with the baster, though, but so far no problem.

One thing about that buttermilk, Bee_Rain - it's not the buttermilk we're used to from the store. The store stuff is "cultured" buttermilk. You can buy a tiny container of the store stuff and put a dollop into the buttermilk you separate out and make some of the best buttermilk you've ever tasted, though. Then, just use the last bit of the current batch to start the next batch.

That's an unexpected fun benefit of having fresh milk - there's always something culturing away in our fridge and kitchen!