Cheesemaking

Info about freezing milk products--by Easy Living the Hard Way


More on milking the goat; cheesemaking

Feta

Fromag Blanc

Finally, mozzarella success!

Today's mozzarella

Gjetost



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Goat milking/milk handling

This is another new page that will be located under the animals/livestock>goats>goat milking/milk handling

Milk:

Freezing milk for winter consumption

To pasteurize or not? (yes)

Safguard pasteurizer

Cream Separator


Milking:

Kicky milkers

My first goat milking

More on milking the goat; cheesemaking






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Goat mania!

On buying hay

Castration--by Howling Duck Ranch

Keeping goats--by Fias Co Farms--a complete primer

Links and resources

Horns--a discussion by The Simple Life

Trimming hooves--by Easy Living the Hard Way

Goat milking/milk handling

Cheesemaking

Health:

Goat off feed and very low milk production (worms and rumen overload)

Misc:

Homemade hay feeder

My herd:
Billy

Daphne

......

And here's Daphne. She's my Lamancha/Nubian mix. In these photos she is telling Porter, my little dog, that if he comes any closer she has no problem head-butting him. Good thing she has been disbudded or he would have been gored. Still hurts the poor fella, but that's what he gets for taunting her.

Betsy

This is Betsy, my Nubian/Alpine mix. Approx 1 year old.

My milker

This is Falcon. She's Lamancha/Alpine mix, roughly 3 years old. She has kidded before, not sure how many times. She gives roughly 1 gallon milk a day. Notice the huge udder!

Oh, that stuff on her face is just molasses.

My purebred Alpine

This is Xoe, my purebred Alpine. She's about 3 years old and bred to an Alpine buck. Hoping she will kid soon.

Cream seperator product review

The picture of this is very similar to the model that I have, only mine performs at 80L/hour and is electric.

It is a total pain in the ass to set up and get set up right. If it is set up wrong it won't work and will start spurting out milk from the back.

When it is working it works efficiently. I cannot attest to the other models that are far more expensive. If they operate in a similar fashion, I would not invest in one. ut I still think  this Russian brand at $150 plus shipping was a worthwhile investment. When I have a lot of cream to seperate and don't want to wait for the cream to seperate naturally I will find the seperator useful.

Anyone thinking of buying one should plan on spending plenty of time getting to know it and set it up. And beware that if  it isn't set up properly milk will spurt out the back and make a huge mess all over the kitchen and waste milk.

Feta

I'm attempting Fias Co Farm's feta cheese. I figure if her recipe for mozzarella was so succesful I might as well try all her other ones.

The feta is turning out nicely but I am scared of it. I am squeamish (sp?) about anything that is sitting out at room temperature. And for some reason I keep finding little black flecks on the surface of the cheese... Probably just little particles of dust. I'm having visions of barfing my brains out from airbourne poop. See what this highly industrialized food system has done to me?

The perfectly white milk highlights any little piece of dust that floats into the milk.

So, I didn't age my cheese for the two or three days recommended. It's only been a day. Instead, I got freaked out about a couple little specks on the surface of the cheese and rinsed the curds, then salted them again and placed them in brine for the refrigerator. The flavor seemed to still be coming along nicely, but it is probably not going to end up being nearly as sharp as it could be. We will see how it turns out.

UPDATE 9/09/2010: I have made this cheese several times since. It turns out great every time.

Safgard Pasteurizer product review

I found the Safgard pasteurizer on The Cheese Queen's site for $300, which is the cheapest I have seen them. I didn't realize until the unit got here that it came with several free cheese cultures. Cool!

Unfortunately I am finding it very clumsy to use. Maybe once we're used to using it we won't have issues. I find the clamp very hard to get clamped down in the right position. The instructions are clear on what to do, but the illustration is like a copy of a copy of a copy that was originally printed fifty years ago. Annoying.

The buzzer sounded only ten minutes after I plugged it in. The instructions say that the pasteurizer will heat to the right temperature in as little as 24 minutes. So I'm not really sure what happened. And the buzzer sound--it was really weird--so I'm not really sure it was the buzzer or something broken. So I tested the temperature of the water, and it was only 150 degrees. Perhaps the thermostat needs to be adjusted, perhaps my thermometer needs to be adjusted.

I will call the store on Monday to see if I can get these little annoyances worked out, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I should have gone with the Hoegger model.

Seattle Times raw milk article

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011399591_rawmilk21m.html?prmid=related_stories_section

Gjetost

someday I may try making this cheese. I've had it many times and find it awfully good (kinda like crack).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A876800

I made butter!

And it was significantly easier than I thought it would be. I've been skimming the tops of the mason jars that are stored with milk. I've been storing the cream that I've skimmed off the top in a pint mason jar in the freezer. When it was half full today I took it out of the freezer, and ran hot tap water over the jar while lightly agitating until the temperature was about that of a refrigerator. Then I shook the heck out of the jar for a few minutes. The cream started to whip and felt like the jar was completely full. Then all the sudden the little butter grains formed and I shook a few more seconds. Then, I put the wad of butter in a strainer, and the butter milk strained off. Then I smooshed the butter in a ramekin, all the extra buttermilk came to the top and I just poured it off. Viola! Butter.

And I was about to spend a small fortune on a cream seperator. Of course, I could probably a higher yield of cream out of a seperator. So maybe I'll consider that later, when we're independantly wealthy.

I had read in a mother earth news column that some people use a wide shallow pan to let the milk settle and skim it. I was originally thinking that I would do this for our cream seperating, but now I realize that would be counterintuitive as there would be too much surface area to try to skim. It is easiest for me to skim the cream off the top of a very full mason jar with a regular size spoon.

If only it had gone that smoothly for the mozzarella I attempted to make for the 4th time. I think this was the worst batch ever. Totally inedible. Two and a half gallons of goat milk that I worked so hard to milk, filter, pasteurize and then fumble around with huge vats of hot liquid.

I think my problem is two-fold. At least I hope I've figured out what is wrong.

1. My "pasteurizing" technique so far has been to heat in the microwave, which is really difficult. I find that the milk can take forever to get up to the correct temperature but quickly overheats. (Which is true of anything that has fat in it... just think of how easy it is to burn nuts). So I've made sure that I get at least a high enough temperature to kill bacteria, but in some instances it has gotten far too high, which will ruin cheesemaking.

I may have to bite the bullet and get the pasteurizer. Ugh. $400 is a lot to spend.

So that partially explains why this batch turned out so badly, but what about past trials? Well, I was reading on Ricki Carroll's website that many Organic farmers are not listing on their labels that they are using the UHT (ultra heat treated) technique on their milk. Perhaps that is why those previous batches failed.

2. I read on Fias Co farms website that the other trick is to get the acidity right and you have to increase the acidity without overdoing it. Well, how the hell do you know what is what? I don't know. And is it possible that one batch of milk will have a different pH than another batch? I saw these the other day, and I can't remember if I ordered some or not. http://hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=4150&cat=33&page=1