We decided to keep goats to try and become self sufficient in dairy products. Although it is now autumn and their milk production had fallen they are still giving us four pints a day. In the early summer, when Boo was very productive, we were getting up to seven pints a day.
The milk comes ready for use, all we do is chill it in the stream before bottling it as it helps stop the milk have a goaty odour.
Between the dogs, the cat, and ourselves we get through a lot of milk but there is still a surplus. Yogurt helps us use up some of the surplus. We make two litre batches each week by a method which is ludicrously simple.
Firstly collect your milk. It is said that it is best to use the milk from the morning milking as this has a higher fat content.
Then start making the yogurt. Put the milk in a saucepan and heat it up to 200F. We then keep it at this temperature for ten to fifteen minutes, stirring throughout. We have found that if we do it for less time the yogurt its not as thick. While we are doing this we heat up the oven to 100F.
Next we put the saucepan in cold water to cool the milk down. One it has cooled to 125F we take some of the cooled milk and mix it with some of last week's yogurt (about 2 tablespoons). If you are starting from scratch use a live yogurt and check that it contains Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. We then put all the milk and this mixture into a Pyrex bowl.
This bowl is wrapped in a towel and put in the oven. The oven is then switched OFF and the mixture is left overnight.
In the morning we remove it from the oven and put it in the fridge. It gets a little thicker as it cools.
This method needs no gadgets other than a thermometer and takes only about 15 minutes of work. So far it has seemed pretty foolproof giving good yogurt each time.
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