You’ve probably heard that it’s difficutl to make butter with goat milk. Well, I don’t know if dificult is the right word, but goats sure don’t produce a lot of cream, so there’s no way we could make enough to cover our family’s needs.
Still, as long as we’ve got the milk, we might as well make what butter we can, right? Mmm… fresh, raw butter.
Typically, I skim the cream off of each jar of milk and save it in a pint jar for several days until it adds up to about 1/3 of the jar. Yes, The cream off of a week’s worth of milk, at a couple tablespoons per gallon easily fits into a pint jar. Then, I take it out and shake it for several minutes until it seperates into butter and buttermilk.
The first thing you’ll notice about goat butter is that it’s white, not yellow. Here, I’ve poured off the buttermilk, and filled the jar with cold water:
After rinsing the butter in cold water several times, I put it in a bowl and worked the rest of the water/buttermilk out with a spoon and then salted it.
The result was just about enough butter to butter two pieces of bread.
Impressive, right? Okay, not so much. A couple tablespoons of butter per week isn’t going to have much impact on the grocery bill, that’s for sure. But if I happen to have a little extra time, it’s kind of a fun thing to do.
Garret sure likes it. Not that I can get him to sit still for a picture…
In case you’re wondering how much difference there is in cream volume between a goat and a cow, the half dozen jerseys and guernsys I’ve had experience with have produced and average of one quart per gallon of milk assuming they were in good health, on good pasture, etc. With goats, it’s more like three tablespoons. Ouch. If there’s one reason I’d like to have a dairy cow rather than goats, it’s definitely the cream. Other than that, I’m quite happy with my goats.
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