Heavy Cream? How to make?

[Tatoosh]

I am clueless here.  I buy heavy cream and whipping cream for cooking and ice cream occasionally.  Where I live in the Philippines, there is only UHT heavy cream.  There is NO OTHER CHOICE.  But there is raw milk from a local dairy that hasn't been skimmed yet.  So I can get cream from that, particularly when I get my supplies and start learning to make cheese.  But how is heavy cream made? Is it the cream of particularly high fat producing cows?  Is it regular cream but concentrated through some special process? 

Some recipes call for non-UHT heavy cream, things like sour cream and cottage cheese.  The only way I can get that is if I make it myself.  But I haven't found a website, wiki, or whatever that tells me how it is made.  Just info on how it is different, the higher fat content. 

Anyone here have experience or knowledge about how heavy cream is made and if it can be produced at home?  The chef's back in the 1800's must have had some method of doing it but it has eluded me so far. 

[Buck47]

After 12 - 24 hours Fresh raw cow's milk left to sit undisturbed separates. The cream rises to the top (much like oil does in water) only milk separates much slower.

With milk you can see the color difference between the cream line and the milk.

One gallon of milk will give approx one qt cream. (depending on the bread of cow, time of year and other factors)

The heavy cream you asked about is the very top of the cream itself. You can tell when you dip out the cream that the very top 1/2 inch is thicker than the rest of the cream. That's what I call heavy cream.

In the photos below I'm skimming off cream from four gallons raw milk. This will produce about One gallon cream. About one pint of the one gallon of cream  is the heavy cream.

BTW: I make icecream using the cream just as I scoop it out. Gives me a nice mix of heavy and light cream.

Regards: john

[Tatoosh]

Thank you very much Buck47.  I have been hunting, mostly via Google, for a clear idea of where heavy cream comes from.  After posting here, I finally found a website that talked a bit about it.  The author at eHow said it took about 9 times as much milk to produce the desired result of cream, citing 1/2 gallon of milk to make 1 cup of heavy cream.  The cattle in the Philippines do not get a highly nutritious diet and even though we are pretty high in the mountains, so it is greener here, I don't think they manage their pasture with an eye to milk production. 

But what you have told me is very encouraging.  If I can get the right cultures here, I should be able to make cottage cheese and sour cream at a much better cost than the imported products available in the markets.  So, perhaps I should shift to a different forum for my next questions, but they are tied to the cream factor, so I will ask here.

My main goal is mozzarella for pizza.  Italian mozzarella is made with very high fat water buffalo milk.  I have some of that available to me, though probably not as high fat as the Italian stuff considering what the Filipinos traditionally feed their buffalo.  A number of the home makers (usually using cows milk) talk about skimming the cream off before making mozzarella.  So I am assuming that the cream from either the dairy milk (cow) or the buffalo milk I buy here does not have to be mixed back into the milk for proper fat content of the cheese.

I expect to make ricotta from the whey.  And I will occasionally make a whole milk cheese, a Queso Blanco or Panir style, along with the whey-based ricotta.  The whole milk cheeses need the cream mixed back in or can I skim it off for use in other products?

Farther down the road I will try Gouda and Provolone as well.  Again primarily for topping for pizza.  I may take a stab at cheddar, but that will be smaller amounts strictly for personal use. 

So the bottom line is where do I look for which cheeses I can take the cream off the top and which ones do I need to keep a high fat content in the milk in order to make higher quality cheese? 

Both the cows milk and buffalo milk are unpasteurized and not homogenized.  I will need to pasteurize prior or as part of the cheese making process since I do not control the milk production and handling prior to my receiving it as a customer. 

Thanks for your insight and sharing your experience.  I covet that nice bucket and lid I see in your photo by the way!

[MrsKK]

I skim the cream off my cow's milk, too.  The first few ladles full are so thick that I have to use a rubber spatula to scrape it off of the ladle.  That's heavy cream.

For making cottage cheese, you will want to skim the cream off of the milk, otherwise the creamy portion will have a different texture that isn't always very pleasant.  I also skim the cream for making my mozzarella and for parmesan and American Neufchatel.

I leave the cream with the milk for Colby, Cheddar, and Havarti.  Most recipe books will state whether you need skimmed or whole milk for the cheesemaking.  Some recipes ask for additional cream.

Good luck!

[Tatoosh]

Hello MrsKK and thank you for sharing your experience.  I really need to get more books on cheese making. I only have one book, from Australia and then what recipes I've found on the internet.  I am eyeballing the cream separators they sell on eBay, many from Europe and set up for 220v systems which we have here.  I don't know if it is worth buying and shipping to the Philippines since I am uncertain how much cheese I will make. 

But if I can skim the cream and use it either for ice cream or for making sour cream, then make mozzarella from the left over milk and ricotta from the left over whey, I will probably go through 20 liters of milk a month, just personal use for the family.  If we open a pizza shop down the road, that will change my quantities quite a bit. 

I will check the recipes as I prepare to use them.  I am just doing a bit of forecasting on what sort of amounts I might have, now that you and Buck47 have cleared up my question about heavy cream.

I have starter culture (buttermilk and a yogurt starter) coming from the USA via mail now.  There are a couple of cultures available here in the Philippines I learned about courtesy of Quebec_Poutine as well as rennet.  So I will only have to look for lipase for my mozzarella and the starter cultures for sour cream and cottage cheese. David Lebovitz, the TV pastry chef, has a recipe for cottage cheese that uses only rennet and after the cottage cheese is made, you add a bit of heavy cream and buttermilk to add flavor. 

Thanks for the guidance, I see that this may be much more cost effective along with being tastier; such a pleasant combination!

[MrsKK]

Since you have buttermilk, you can make creme fraiche with your heavy cream.  It is like a combination of sour cream and butter and is wonderful on english muffins with fresh jam, fruit, baked potatoes or anywhere else you use sour cream.  Just use 2 tablespoons of buttermilk to a cup of heavy cream and put a lid on the container.  Keep it in a warm area (room temp warm, so 65-75 degrees) for 8-10 hours or until thickened.  Put in the refrigerator and it will thicken even more.  My house is rather cool in the wintertime, so I put it on top of my fridge overnight, then put the jar in a pot of hot tap water to get it to thicken better.  I love this stuff!

As for a cream separator, if you are just separating for personal use, you can just ladle the cream off.  It really is quite simple.  If you go to making cheese for a more commercial purpose, though, you may want a mechanical cream separator.