Author Archives: John

Scaling up Operations

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Monday, August 6th, 2012

So, this past weekend was an eventful one for me. For one, I decided to make yet another beautiful/pleasant drive up to Edgwick Farms in Cornwall, NY. It is so nice up there that I wouldn’t mind moving there someday…

Last time I visited Edgwick Farm I purchased 2 gallons of raw Goat’s milk, which went rather quickly, so this time I decided to scale up a bit so I ordered 3 gallons. I left my house at 8:22. Farmer Dan was going to leave the farm at 10 am in order to go to a farmers market. My GPS said it would take 1 hour and 30 minutes to get there… luckily traffic was on my side that morning, and I made it there by 9:30. Farmer Dan had the 6 jars of milk ready for me with a label “John” on each of them. I loaded up my cooler and headed to a nearby store for some ice.

Back home, I left 3 of the jars outside of the refrigerator in order to get them to room temperature for the creation of yogurt. In the meantime, my younger brother had arrived with one of his friends. Only my brother had the guts to try the raw milk… Then they both noticed how I left the jars outside of the refrigerator and I told them that I was going to turn them into yogurt.

I waited for about 2 hours and then placed the 3 jars (half a gallon each) into a large pot. I turned on the burner and took a large 17oz container of Fage Total Classic (read: with all the fat) and set it outside to let it warm up slowly to room temperature.

So while I was waiting for the milk to heat, I said to myself, let’s try this original brand of Greek-Yogurt. I must say… Fage does make some pretty good yogurt! I also want to say that that paper net/remnant from their straining process is pretty cool as well. I love peeling it off with my fingers and licking the yogurt remaining yogurt from it.

Anyway, so 110 degrees Fahrenheit is reached, and I place 17ounces of Fage Total minus a few tablespoons which I ate into the mixture and stir thoroughly. I place it into a warm oven, which has the heat turned off but was just preheated to 200 degrees.

This time I decided to place a thermometer into the pot while it was incubating. Now my thermometer was not big enough to touch the bottom of the pot, and neither did it have a latch to hook on to the side of the pot to prevent it from falling in. So I decided to take a thin towel and to cover the pot with it and to leave a little opening to the side for the thermometer to latch on to. This way I kept checking the temperature of the incubating cultured milk every 2 hours and I would turn the oven on for a few minutes each time to let the mixture slowly increase its temperature back up to 110.

So 7 hours passed, and I looked at the mixture and did not see any whey separate onto the top, remember, this is raw goats’ milk yogurt, which means that the yogurt cultures are competing with other present cultures (i.e. beneficial stuff not present in pasteurized milk) so I decided to press on and let the milk culture overnight. So I set the alarm for 3am and when it went off I took a look at the temperature and heated the oven for a little bit.

Then I wake up in the morning and decide it is time to strain the yogurt! Here is a screenshot of how large of a pot I used to culture the yogurt with:

The yogurt produced a little more than half a gallon of whey after straining it, and a really large bowl and just a large bowl of strained greek-yogurt.

 

Warning: Do not eat raw goat’s milk yogurt, it will ruin your taste buds and you will be forever unable to eat yogurt from any retail location and/or restaurant ever again in your life.

Also, I want to say that according to mainstream medicine, I am “lactose intolerant”, which means if I drink milk from a regular dairy – such as Tuscan Farms or any other conventional brand of milk, my stomach will immediately become upset and I will have lots of flatulence and will make many trips to the bathroom. When drinking this milk, I do not have even the slightest sympton of “lactose intolerance”. Are any professors listening?

-John

P.S. You can also find Edgwick Farms on facebook at the following url: http://www.facebook.com/edgwickfarm

Real Greek Yogurt

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There are two and only two ingredients in real, authentic Greek Yogurt:

  1. Raw Goats’ Milk
  2. Yogurt Culture

I made some of my own real, authentic Greek Yogurt this past weekend by using none other than the fine Raw Goats’ Milk that I obtained from Edgwick Farms in Cornwall New York.  What I did follows and you can use this information as instructions for how you can make real, authentic Greek Yogurt from the privacy of your home without having to deal with all the additives, preservatives and other nasty tricks that “Greek Yogurt” manufacturers engage in in order to make a bigger profit, at your expense.

You can visit Edgwick Farms yourself, they are located at 348 Angola Road, Cornwall, NY. By the way, their Feta is awesome…


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I took about 3 liters of raw goats’ milk and placed it into a pot and turned on the heat. Once the thermometer read 115 degrees Fahrenheit I introduced a small amount of yogurt culture into the bottom of the pot and stirred it slowly to avoid leaving any thick yogurt clumps.  The yogurt which I used said “contains live cultures” on the package.  After allowing it to incubate for approximately 7 hours, I noticed that very little yogurt culture thrived and I was left with a pot full of milk and very little “new” yogurt.  After doing some research, I determined that this occurred because raw goats’ milk contains many naturally occurring cultures that also compete with the cultures that I introduced via an amount of already existing yogurt.  So I decided to heat the milk up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit to kill some, if not most of the already existing cultures. (Most yogurt manufacturers heat their yogurt to temperatures above and beyond 185 degrees Fahrenheit, which not only kills any live cultures, it also destroys the molecular structure of any, if not most beneficial compounds present in your milk.) After heating the milk to 150 degrees, I waited for it to cool to 110 degrees and then I tried again with some more starter yogurt.

After 7 hours of sitting in the oven – my incubator, I opened the pot and to my delight saw my brand new yogurt made from fresh raw goats’ milk!  I then wrapped up the yogurt in a cheese cloth and placed a bowl beneath where I hung it up to collect the whey.

After 2 hours, I opened the cheese cloth and scooped out some real Greek Yogurt.  I then placed it into the refrigerator and here is what it looked like after about 1 hour:

Now, that is *REAL* Greek Yogurt!  Not yogurt made from reconstituted milk or non-fat milk mixed with milk solids and powdered milk and some more “forms” of milk.

And you want frozen Greek Yogurt? How about you stick it in the freezer overnight.  Don’t believe the Ben & Jerry’s hype, their yogurt is full of sugar and other things that they think the average person cannot understand like “liquid sugar”, “sugar”, “water”, and “corn syrup solids.”  I’m serious, see the picture of the label below, the ingredients literally read:

  • Liquid Sugar (Sugar, Water)
  • Sugar
  • Water
  • Corn Syrup Solids

Did the chef have a hard time with that one? Mix Sugar and Water, add to yogurt.  Take sugar, add to yogurt, take water, add to yogurt.  Take corn syrup solid, add to yogurt. Wow, I must say, this is an amazing recipe, I only dream of being like the folks over at Ben & Jerry’s one day.  Why don’t the founders go occupy some real food ingredients for a change?

Fake frozen Greek yogurt:

*Raw Goats’ milk was legally purchased from Edgwick Farms in Cornwall, New York. (see http://edgwickfarm.wordpress.com/, or find them on facebook)

Note: In the State of New York, you can only buy raw milk on the farm from a licensed raw milk farm.  So that means I have to drive 2 hours each way from home in order to buy raw milk.  But the milk and yogurt tastes so much better that I am more than willing to make the trip there from time to time.