Is it better to make butter from fresh goat's cream, or can you let it sour a little like is sometimes done with cow's cream. I don't want to end up with "goaty" tasting butter.

-- Judy Bowman (bowman61@altavista.com), March 28, 2000

Answers

Fresh cream, by all means. The absolutely best way would be with cream separated out mechanically, a goaty taste can develop in the time it takes for the cream to seperate out by gravity. The real taste problems will come in if your cooling isn't fast enough, or your storage temperature is too high, the chemical changes that cause the off taste are speeded up by higher temperatures.

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), March 28, 2000.

Hi,

I use fresh cream... however.. if I don't have enough to make a pound of butter I save it in a jar til i have enough. then i use my mixer or bleander to whip. goat butter comes out a lighter color but sooo good.

bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), March 28, 2000.

Judy, if you can find an iced tea jar (the "sun tea" type) then you can just top of the jar, let it sitin the fridge, and drain the milk off of the bottom. Do this until you have enough, and it will be cold and fresh.

-- Rachel (rldk@hotmail.com), March 30, 2000.

I found this at www.price-pottenger.org. This is obviously for cow's milk, but I wonder if it could/would also apply to goat's milk.

PPNF Articles: Nutrition in a Nutshell: Living Foods Dehydrators The Case for Butter by Trauger Groh, Farmer and Lecturer Butter and Honey shall He eat that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good

The use of butter for human nutrition and the processing of milk into cream and then butter is as old as the keeping of cattle as domestic animals. It goes back to prehistoric times. The process is simple and has been in use for thousands of years. Raw milk is put into vats and placed in a cool place. After twenty-four hours, most of the cream rises to the surface and can be skimmed off with a flat spoon, owing to the fact that the fat globules are the lighter part of the milk. Traditionally, the cream is then fermented by acid producing germs. This process takes about 24 to 36 hours in the summer. When it is completed, the sour cream is mechanically beaten with wooden tools until the butterfat globules stick together and the protein-carrying liquid -- the buttermilk -- is released. Then the butter is washed thoroughly to get out all remaining protein particles. Finally, the butter is kneaded to get out as much water as possible, salted and formed. Since man began to make and use butter, he made it from ripened matured cream -- sour cream. A change to unsoured or sweet cream butter came only in the forties of this century. The reasons for the change were purely technical. Machines work most economically and profitably when they run permanently. Buttering machines were constructed that transformed sweet cream endlessly into butter. Sour cream at this time resisted this process. You had to fill the churn with one batch of sour cream, finish buttering, clean the churn and start again. Thus for purely technical reasons, people became used to sweet cream butter. The standard book about butter making from 1915, Principles and Practise of Butter Making by McKay and Larson, does not even mention sweet cream butter. Here is what the authors say about making butter: To Produce Flavor and Aroma: The chief object of cream-ripening is to secure the desirable and delicate flavor and aroma which are so characteristic of good butter. These flavoring substances, so far as known, can only be produced by a process of fermentation. It is a well known fact that the best flavor in butter is obtained when the cream assumes a clean, pure, acid taste during the ripening. For this reason, it is essential to have the acid-producing germs predominate during the cream ripening; all other germs should if possible be excluded or suppressed. ... When cream has been properly ripened, it is practically a pure culture of lactic-acid-producing germs, while sweet unpasteurized cream contains a bacterial flora, consisting of a great many types of desirable and undesirable germs. Here a very important point is touched on: lacto-acid-producing germs -- very helpful for our digestion -- are able to suppress all other unwanted, even pathogenic, germs. Lactic acid fermentation is far superior to the heating of milk (pasteurization) in suppressing pathogenic germs. The pasteurization of the milk dramatically changes the fine composition of the raw milk. Even warming to 120 degrees Fahrenheit alters this fine composition that includes various proteins, vitamins, sugars and enzymes. Homogenization destroys the butterfat globules so much that the cream can no longer rise in the milk. The milk is denaturalized. Buttering cream is, as we have seen, a purely mechanical process. The quality of the cream is the deciding factor, and this means that the cream should be properly ripened and contain a preponderance of lactic-acid producing germs. The cream ripening is usually achieved with the help of a starter. Besides a pure culture obtained by a laboratory, we can use as a natural starter a great many dairy products which are supposed to contain a preponderance of those germs which are involved in producing the desirable flavor in butter: buttermilk, sour cream, whey, sour whole or skimmed milk. A great advantage of sour cream buttering is that it produces, besides the butter, the refreshing and highly digestible buttermilk. The buttermilk coming out of modern sweet cream buttering tastes, like the butter, flat and cannot be used for human consumption. True buttermilk is no longer on the market. What is on the market under this name is not the result of the buttering process of sour cream. It is usually pasteurized skimmed milk, fermented with a laboratory culture. At the beginning of this century we still had experienced old country medical doctors. When they were called to a baby that had an intolerance of cows milk, they often gave the farmers the advice to separate a cow from the herd and to feed her only good hay -- no grain, no silage (which was not in use anyway), no mangels or rutabagas -- and feed the child with the milk of this cow. Most babies then could digest this milk. If in some cases the child could not take this milk, it was recommended to feed the child buttermilk from farm-produced butter. I experienced such a case in my youth where a starving child was helped that way. The point I want to make here is that the quality of the butter depends on the quality of the cream and its proper fermentation. The quality of our cream depends on the quality of the milk and the quality of the milk depends on the way the animals are fed on the farm. As it is usual in this country, cows that are fed with concentrates containing grain and soy, in addition to large amounts of corn silage and with only a little hay, produce large amounts of milk -- 20,000 pounds and more per year. But they have constant light diarrhea and often have diseased livers, a fact that shows up only in the slaughterhouse. Their milk is of a totally different quality than the milk of a cow fed with grass and hay. Their lives are ended on the average within five or six years instead of twelve to fifteen years that a properly fed cow can reach. After the suffering of the cow comes the suffering of the milk. The milk has to be deep cooled on the farm because the milk truck comes only two or three times a week (energy use). In the factory, it has to be warmed up for the separator that separates the cream out (energy use). Then the cream and the de-creamed milk have to be pasteurized with another high use of energy. Then cream and skimmed milk have to be united again into whole milk. Part of the cream goes into butter. Everything then has to be deep cooled, transported and deep cooled again before it comes into the hands of the consumer (more energy use). In the whole process, many vitamins are lost. Who expects this white liquid or this whitish, tasteless butterfat to have any life-giving properties? In addition to all that is mentioned, the milk has to be pushed and sucked through miles of pipes that have to be chemically cleaned. Here -- more often than you think -- a late new germ infection is happening in the pasteurized matter. Farm or close-to-farm processing saves huge amounts of energy and leaves the life forces of the milk intact. The consumers have to fight for the right to choose raw milk and raw milk products from farms they know and they can trust and that underlie certain hygienic controls. They have to fight for their rights against the close cooperation of dairy industry and state veterinarians. This country was based on a concept of freedom. We have to fight to re-establish the freedom of choice on all levels. The right to choose the medication I trust, the right to choose the school I trust for my children and the right to choose the food I trust from the sources I know and can trust.

All information Copyright ©1997,1998, 1999 PPNF. All rights reserved. Contact The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation at "mailto:info@price-pottenger.org">info@price-pottenger.org

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), April 13, 2000.

Personally, I much prefer goat's milk butter made from cultured cream--it tastes more like butter and isn't goaty at all. I just add a little bit of cultured buttermilk to a jar of cream, set it on top of my Bunn coffeemaker (where its constantly warm), and let it ripen for 12-24 hours. Chill and then churn. It's better than the best storebought butter.

-- Julia Farmer (farmer@westco.net), May 28, 2000.