Author Topic: Culturing your own buttermilk for use as a starter  (Read 1551 times)

billmac

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Culturing your own buttermilk for use as a starter
« on: December 22, 2015, 02:01:54 PM »
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to culturing your own buttermilk from scratch (ie: allowing the milk to clabber over several days, feeding it, etc) for use as a mesophilic culture?  Are you less likely to get the bacterial profile you want, or is it better to culture your own milk with store bought buttermilk?

I'm milking goats so I have fresh goat's milk.

Offline awakephd

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Re: Culturing your own buttermilk for use as a starter
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2015, 03:02:08 PM »
Others will offer a more knowledgeable response than I  ... but lack of knowledge has never stopped me from plunging ahead, so here's my $0.02:

The advantage of culturing your own will be the rich complexity of bacteria and therefore of flavors.

The disadvantage of culturing your own will be the rich complexity of bacteria and therefore of flavors ... some of which may not be so desirable, and any of which may be less than predictable.

Since you have fresh / raw milk to work with, you're going to get some good complexity of flavor regardless. Thus, if it were me, I'd use the prepared and predictable cultures to set the dominant flavor(s), and let the richness of the raw milk provide the subtleties.
-- Andy