yogurt culture

First time in this part of the forum. My wife makes some homemade dairy products, mostly yogurt, sometimes mozz and cheddar. She usually uses yogurt from the store with active cultures, like dannon, to inoculate milk to make yogurt. She would like to get some different yogurt culture because she notices defects in the stuff she is making now. She has tried New England Cheese Making cultures and absolutely hated the taste.

Any yogurt makers out there? If so can you recommend any cultures?

Kent88 said:

First time in this part of the forum. My wife makes some homemade dairy products, mostly yogurt, sometimes mozz and cheddar. She usually uses yogurt from the store with active cultures, like dannon, to inoculate milk to make yogurt. She would like to get some different yogurt culture because she notices defects in the stuff she is making now. She has tried New England Cheese Making cultures and absolutely hated the taste.

Any yogurt makers out there? If so can you recommend any cultures?

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I've made lots of yogurt. I always just use a scoop of whatever greek yogurt is in the fridge. It's usually Activia. Probably others, don't remember.

My wife and I make quite a bit of yogurt. We use Chobani or Fage interchangeably. We absolutely hated Oikos when we tried it. We also freeze about half a cup of our fresh made yogurt to act as a starter for our next batch.

I've tried several brands of yogurt as my starter. Dannon and Yoplait make a pretty decent yogurt. Lately, I've been using Noosa. I can't ever seem to find it unflavored so I use the honey flavored stuff. My wife and I really like the flavor and texture we get from the Noosa culture.

I make two gallons of yogurt at a time about every three weeks. I hang it and drain off about 3 1/2 quarts of whey then put it in quart jars in the fridge. I make about 4 or 5 generations before buying another carton of starter.

What temp do y'all ferment yogurt? I made my first attempt last week and I think it was to hot. Set my temp controller to 110° but it got up to 113° cause I had the differential to high. It fermented for about 12 hours. After straining it came in between a cottage cheese and Greek yogurt for consistency... Any suggestions? I was going for Greek haha

After cooking at 180° for one hour, I cool the milk to about 110° and add the starter. I then set the controller at 115° and ferment for about 12 hours.

The whey that I drain off the finished yogurt makes a pretty refreshing beverage when lightly carbonated. Seriously. I take it to work for lunch once in a while just to freak people out.

skipper1953 said:

After cooking at 180° for one hour, I cool the milk to about 110° and add the starter. I then set the controller at 115° and ferment for about 12 hours.

The whey that I drain off the finished yogurt makes a pretty refreshing beverage when lightly carbonated. Seriously. I take it to work for lunch once in a while just to freak people out.

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Ok so now I'm confused as i pretty much did all of this, though I didn't do an hour at 180° only 5 mins. But everything else pretty much the same. But like I said my consistency was closer to cottage cheese than Greek

Anyone know where I'm going wrong?

You cooked some of the milk. Strain the milk before you add the culture next time

And if it is mostly "Kurd" try getting your milk to temp slower.

After fermenting, the yogurt needs to be strained to get Greek style yogurt. Note that when I make a 2 gallon batch of yogurt I will drain off 3 to 4 quarts of whey.

Since last March I have used Noosa yogurt exclusively for my starter culture. I have reduced the maximum temperature from 180° to 170°. The fermentation temperature and duration have remained the same. I get a pretty thick yogurt from my process even before straining.

Unfortunately, I have never had any problems with getting my yogurt to set the way I want it to. As a result, I have little experience trouble shooting the process. I have heard that over heating the milk will result in a less desirable end product. I don't know about heating faster or slower as I always use my brew kettle as a double boiler to heat my milk.

I think one of the secrets to obtain a thicker yogurt is to evaporate off some of the water in the milk. The longer you keep the milk at the higher temperature the more H20 is evaporated off and so you have less water in the yogurt. Another possible way to decrease the water content - relatively speaking - is to increase the amount of milk solids in the milk and you can do that by adding powdered milk to the milk before you add the culture.

If the consistency was closer to cottage cheese , doesn't that suggest that the milk was curdling or clabbering which suggests to me that the milk was souring (the pH was too low? or the cultures that you added were not simply yogurt but something that separated the curds from the whey... )...

I made yogurt once just for fun. I used probiotic capsules, which worked great!
I don't have any sort of temp control systems so I found a product with Lacto plantarum (it grows quite well at room temperature).
This may be an option for anyone wanting a fairly easy & consistent source of cultures... just keep the pills refrigerated.
HTH