Goat Milk Butter

Here is how to make butter, from either cow or goat cream. No special equipment is needed for this, just a little patience.

I am using goat cream for this batch. The cream has been skimmed off the top of the milk and stored in the freezer until I get enough to make something out of it. Goat cream separates off the milk only after it has been sitting in the refrigerator two days or more. There isn't quite as much cream as with cows' milk, but it's creamy enough to make butter from.




Here's the frozen cream. I filled the jar only about halfway to allow for good shaking.




I let the cream thaw, then start shaking the jar. Seriously, that's it!
Here's the beginning of the butter process.




When you make butter, it is important to realize that before the cream turns to butter, it makes whipped cream. If you get whipped cream instead of butter, keep shaking, you're almost there!

Here the cream is starting to peak, almost to whipped cream stage.






The cream can be difficult to shake, but this is why I only filled the jar halfway. Using the palm of one hand and tapping the lid as you shake promotes a churning action of sorts and makes the process go slightly faster.

After a few minutes of shaking whipped cream, it will start to feel slightly sloshy again. Keep shaking, it is starting to separate into butter.

In these pictures, the cream has separated to butter. Note the liquid and solids of different colors in the jar. The liquid darker stuff is buttermilk, and the white stuff is butter. Congratulations, you've made your own butter!




Here is the unstrained butter, with the buttermilk still in it. Straining off as much as the buttermilk as possible is important to keep the butter fresh. Rinsing the butter with ice water can help get all the buttermilk out.

If you wish, you can save your buttermilk for baking, pancakes, or animal feeding, ect. It's good stuff.




I use a coffee filter to strain the buttermilk out of the butter. You can also rinse the butter in ice water to help get the buttermilk out at this stage, but then you still have to strain the water out. I don't personally bother with rinsing my butter.




Then the butter is put back into a clean jar, and salt is added and stirred in at this point if you wish.

The butter stores in the refrigerator for a week or so, and much longer in the freezer.