Brainstorm/Troubleshoot with me:
The past several days my cream hasn't made butter at all. Not even a fleck. I haven't changed the routine at all, the temp settings are the same in the fridge, etc. It has been a tad more humid, but that's about it.
Two quarts of cream turned straight to 'whipped butter' in the jars before even handling. It was smooth and thick, no way at all to wash the buttermilk out.
When I went to skim Monday's AM milk, the cream had a thicker rubbery skin over it. This morning, skimming Monday's PM milk was the same.
Our process here is the milk goes from machine to my stainless pails and we lid them and they go to the fridge until next milking, then we skim the cream and jar the milk up. The pails are sanitized, they are room temp (not hot from washing, not too cold). I do the pails because it's easier to skim with the wider surface area than if we jarred straight from the machine.
(Monday AM is skimmed Monday PM, Monday PM is skimmed Tuesday AM, etc.)
They are on the same shelf in the fridge and everything seems to be the same....but I'm getting cream I can't make butter from :(
This mornings' is no exception :(
My cream looks like a whipped milkshake. No trace of butter yet again :(
Ideas?
3 comments:
Could be the heat is a factor. What's the temp been?
Cow eating/drinking more or less?
These things could affect the consistancy of the milk.
Another thing, bacteria will grow preety quickly in the heat so consider this too.
Two things come to my mind for your dilemma. First, the best cream for making butter is when your cow "lets down" completely. When our cow doesn't let down and wants to *save* some for her calf, the little that we do get is not the thick rich stuff to make butter with. The cream is the last to come out of the cow :-) Thus your need to strip her well. Second, we use a vita mix to make our butter and sometimes I just have to give it a bit more time and the whipped milkshake does turn into butter. Sometimes it just turns into hot whipped milkshake ;-) The cream will also be different at different times in the cow's lactation and will change slightly with a change in her diet, even sometimes depends on what she's eaten in the pasture that day. Hard controlling which weeds or grasses she is interested in on any particular day. Hope this helps some. Love your blog!
I had that ptoblrm a few times when we first got Anna-Belle. I finally figured out that i needed to gt the cream to a certain temperature (lukewarm) to get it to turn to butter. I also learned that cream that is at least 4-5 days old makes a better, creamier butter. I let it sit in the fridge for the 4-5 days them make butter.
Hope this helps. Oh, I also chill the milk in a cooler with several ice packs after milking for an hour, I then put it into the fridge. It's suppose to help get bacteria down and after doing this for over a year, I can say we have not had any problems.
Blessings,
Amanda <><
Matthew 6:33
Homesteadblogger/homemomto3
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