Hello,
I asked this on another thread, but thought it might be best to start a new one:
When I lived on the East Coast, I used to make yogurt from scratch fairly regularly. I think I got my first batch started with a bit of yogurt from my Mom, who started her original culture years earlier with just milk and lemon juice. Since moving to New Mexico, I just can't get a yogurt culture to survive, even if I use a large amount of live-culture, raw, organic commercial yogurt to start it. Is it possible that the altitude or dryness is somehow inhibiting the culture? Does anyone have any tips as to how to get a good yogurt base started?
Thank you,
ninrn
Hello ninrn,
I expect that your Mom started her yoghurt from raw milk - the only source of the necessary lactic acid bacteria (commercial starters also have as their original source bacteria from raw milk). The lemon juice may have created an acidic pH, allowing the lactic acid bacteria a head start over spoilage bacteria, but it is not really necessary.
Store bought yoghurts are almost all "direct set" fermented with a combination usually of just two starter strains (typically Streptococcus lactis and Lactobacillus bulgaricus), and don't replicate the microbial complexity of traditional yoghurts. While traditional heirloom yoghurts can be propagated indefinitely, direct set yoghurts can only be propagated two or three times, if that.
To start a new yoghurt culture you need fresh raw milk (the "fresh" is important - preferably straight from the cow and not refrigerated, or if refrigerated, only for a few hours. Leave in a warm place, or in a yoghurt maker, and it will "clabber" - thicken and sour (if it separates, it is probably a problem of coliform overgrowth, which is seen if the milk has been in the fridge for too long). The clabber is your yoghurt starter - like a sourdough, it will get better in both texture and taste as you propagate it.
The key is fresh raw milk! Try to set up the clabber with milk not more than a day from the udder!
Wow, Pomeso, what a helpful and informative response. Thank you.
I'm fairly sure I can get raw milk here, so I'll give it a shot. Do you have any experience using "heirloom" yogurt starters like those sold via Cultures for Health? Do those approximate (or generate) the microbial complexity of traditional yogurts?
Thanks again,
ninrn
Hello ninrn,
Yes, I have, and they are great if what you are looking for is a predicatble outcome. They do have considerably less microbial complexity than raw milk, and as a result you need to be more careful about cleanliness to prevent contamination.
Raw milk ferments (yoghurt, kefir, cultured butter, cheese) , in contrast, were made by our ancestors in neolithic times. You really can be quite casual about cleanliness!
I like to think that eating raw food and fermented food like yoghurt and sauerkraut is helpful in restoring the microbial flora of our gut to something like it was before the advent of the industrial age. Maybe it is, maybe not!
5 years ago I made yogurt in this way and it was incredibly delicious. I used raw milk, took the clabber and made a second small amount of fermented raw milk with it and then took from that second batch to make my final yogurt. The only thing I cannot remember at all is how high I heated my milk.
Today I heated raw milk to 160-163F for 15-20 seconds and placed the milk in a yogurt maker. I took another small amount of raw milk and heated it to 180F for just a couple seconds before removing it from the heat. I put this in my yogurt maker as well. They’ve been in there for over 12 hours and I just checked them. Neither one of them has formed any clabber yet.
I cannot remember how long it took the first time I did this and I’m thinking maybe it took 24hours. Does this sound right?
Also, if I were to heat the raw milk to only 145F, is this enough to kill harmful pathogens? I have read that you can heat it to 145F but need to hold that temp for 30 minutes, which is too long when you have babies at home. I cannot sit over a thermometer for 30 minutes. This is why I tried the 160-163F for 15-20 seconds. I hope this isn’t too much heat for the probiotic strains.
Can you tell me your experience with heating the raw milk and creating yogurt starter? Have you tried heating the raw milk to 160 or 180?
To definitely kill pathogens in raw milk, the temperature advised by ag school community extension services and by the CDC is 165deg Farenheit, for 15 seconds. Best to do this in a double boiler. This is effectively home pasteurization though, so you will lose the good bacteria in the milk along with the bad, and several valuable heat-sensitive compounds, like vitamin C and beta lactoglobulin, will be destroyed. But you’ll still have the benefits of the healthy fats and most of the other nutrients a clean, grass-fed dairy product offers, and none of the weird stuff added to factory milk. You’ll also be growing other healthy probiotics when you ferment the milk. Raw milk kefir has been absolutely transformative for my health, and my parents, who have the strongest constitutions I’ve seen, both grew up drinking raw goat and cow milk. But I’d still be scared to risk it with small kids and especially babies.
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