On Saturday morning I was up at 5AM as I had to take the cream out of the fridge and put it in the ovens to warm up. I had decanted it from the gallon jugs the night before so it would warm up faster. I washed the gallon jugs and put them in the fridge too, to save for putting buttermilk in.
I also had to get the kitchen cleaned up for butter making. Once I had that done, I worked on the day’s post while I waited for my #1 intern to get up. Every hour I would shake the jars for more even warming.
She got up about 7:15AM and made breakfast. I remembered I needed two 5 gallon buckets for the waste wash water so I went out and found 2 and got them washed up and strainers on the tops.
My #1 intern got started churning. When we made butter 2 years ago, it was my helper friend who had always done it. He was very good at it. He said if I got the temperature right, around 64ºF, it should only take about 10 minutes to churn.
The temperature had registered just 64ºF but it took about 35 minutes to churn. We aren’t sure why it took so long. She had 3 batches to do as I’d gotten 2 gallons of cream.
When the first batch had finally gone to butter, we poured it in a large bowl and I drained off the buttermilk. My helper friend’s mom loves getting the buttermilk for baking and keeps some frozen in the freezer.
My helper friend always did all 3 batches at once when it came to washing. But because it had churned so long, I was afraid it would get too soft to wash properly so I started washing it right away.
He had said to do at least 11 washes until the water was clear. Each wash water was poured into the waste buckets through the strainers, as the butter sometimes falls off the sides of the bowl. The waste water doesn’t go down the drain due to fat content as I have a septic system. It goes over the bank at the edge of my property.
So I got each batch thoroughly washed and the butter firmed up well and I started pressing the remaining water out. Then I packed it in the dish for hardening. I did each batch as she finished.
Butter is best made when the organically fed cows go out on pasture in the spring. The cream is optimal for butter. Once the grass starts to go to seed in the summer, it’s better for cheese making.
We had started at 7:30AM and finished just before 10:15AM when she had to go to her job. We’d gotten all the cleanup done as we went along after she had finished the churning.
So our first attempt at making butter was pretty much a success. We think we’re going to drop the temperature a degree or 2 and see if that speeds up the churning.