Author Topic: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start  (Read 4509 times)

Gustav

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Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« on: May 29, 2011, 07:37:09 AM »
Hi there!

I need some help with this. I used to have a problem with the thickness in the past, so I moved from skimmed milk to full cream milk,
but it still wasn't what I wanted, so I increased the stabiliser from 0.9% to 1.5 % of total volume & it came out great. Thick, creamy yoghurt. I scoop the cream on top off to prevent fatty lumps in it & mix it a lil bit with the whisk to get a smoother texture, but it seems like the yoghurt is making small flakes inside, I guess it looks a lil bit like smooth yoghurt with flout in it.

Atached is the culture that I use for this. My recipe is as follows:

-5 Litre full cream milk
-180g white sugar
-75g stabiliser
-150g fruit pulp
-3g preservative

I usually mix the stabiliser & sugar with the milk & leave it in the fridge for 3-5 hours to bond properly. Then I heat the milk to 87-89'C & hold it there for 30 minutes.
Then I cool it off to 38-42'Cpour it through a sieve to collect some of the solid bits & add the preservative & culture.
I then incubate at 40'-42"C for 7 hours , just before it gets a bit tangy.

I then fridge it for 8 hours, mix in the pulp & fridge again for 8 hours before distribution.

As I said, the texture & taste is great, just the flakes that needs to go.

Any advice?

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2011, 04:30:10 AM »
Stabilizer and preservatives????? - What's the point of making it at home if you put the stuff you don't want to buy in it?

In any event, you should always first make the yogurt entirely and cool it down before adding any sugars and fruit preparations. When you put sugar into it in the middle of culturing, the bacteria begins feeding on the sugar and breaking it down instead of feeding on the lactose, so its yogurt-making efficiency is seriously reduced from that point on.

What kind of preservative are you using? Preservatives are made to either kill or to create an environment that prevent stuff from growing. Using that during the culturing process is also like shooting yourself in the foot.

These may be reasons that stuff crystallizes on you.  Try eliminating this by yogurting all the way first and then adding stuff. See if you are still having the issue

Gustav

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2011, 04:59:09 AM »
I want to make yoghurt to sell to customers that currently pourchase from stores.
The preservatives I put in totally at the end, just before packaging & I do this because the stock may stand a bit on the shelf, it's not for myself though.

I tried making it without stabilisers, but then it doesn;t come out thick enough & if it is packaged, the liquid seperates to the top & people don't like that.

If I add the sugar after I made it, doesn't that Mean I have to stirr it in untill the sugar crystals are absorbed? Wont alot of stiring make it too runny? What do you suggest? Should I melt the sugat in a little bit of water or something before adding it?

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2011, 05:53:35 AM »
Yogurt is kept alive and does not need preservatives. With the right packaging it can stay alive for months.

Additionally, many customers don't like the smooth homogeneous texture. They associate it with cheap brands like Danon and Yoplait. I live in New York and it seems that all the high end supermarkets have now "non-homogenized" and "creamline" yogurts that sell for far more than the smooth stuff with the stabilizers.

You can thicken the yogurt naturally by playing with the balance between the different variables:
 - length of incubation
 - Incubation temperature.
 - Heating, boiling or almost-boiling the milk (change the shape pf milk proteins).
 - pre-ripening the milk
 - Use different culture or use your older yogurt to start this yogurt and create a bacterial heirloom.

Lastly, there is one thing that many yogurt makers hate doing but it really thickens up yogurt: Straining it. You will lose lots of yield in the process but the quality will be far better, like Greek yogurt.  Consider selling this as "artisanal" or "farm style" yogurt for higher premium than supermarket brands, Yoplait or Danon.

As for the sugar - yes! If you are sugaring it up, use syrup. (50% sugar, 50% water). It will be thick so it will thicken your yogurt or at the very least keep it the same.  The other option is that if you are doing fruit yogurt, combine the sugar in the fruit preparation. The customer would mix the fruit into the yogurt anyway.

Where are you making the yogurt?

Sailor Con Queso

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2011, 02:35:54 PM »
What kind of stabilizer? I add a little tapioca flour to the cold milk, heat to 190F, and hold for 30 minutes. Then cool down to 110F - 115F, add culture (or yogurt as starter) and incubate at 105F for 6 hours. This produces a wonderfully thick yogurt without straining and my customers love the flavor. I agree with iratherfly - no preservatives necessary.

Gustav

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #5 on: May 30, 2011, 03:10:27 PM »
It makes sence that the addition of suges at the beginning will affect the ratio at wich the cultures consume lactose and provide lactic acid.
I will make some yoghurt without stabilisers and preservatives as I did a long time ago. I noticed that if I don't add stabiliser there is alot of liquid on top & even if I pour it off, there seems to form some more on top in the container that puts some people off.

The other thing I like about using stabiliser is thatit gives the yoghurt a bir more heavier,thicker taste instead of a light creamy taste.
As I said, the yoghurt comes out exellent, it's just that it seems to have small flakes inside it.

PS. I do put it through a strainer to catch some solid parts and get a lump free yoghurt.

I will make another batch & let ou know how it went.

I will get the specsheet for the stabiliser.

I make all my dairy products in my on my dairy farm where I have all my equipment.

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2011, 11:52:03 PM »
The whey on top puts off your customers? What kind of yogurt did they get until now? Any quality yogurt would have whey on it, as would any sour cream, fromage blanc, quark and a million other products.  As a matter of fact, I would expect to see it there because the only yogurt that won't have it is industrially produced product like Danon and Yoplait. Not only do they use stabilizer to give people non-rustic plasticy looking smooth thing but they also use it in order to include less yogurt and more water/whey to increase yield - essentially combining whey and stabilizer and mixing it into the yogurt to increase volume without producing actual yogurt. It is far cheaper to water down yogurt and add stabilizer rather than strain, incubate longer or use quality milk that would not separate.

Given that you are a farmstead producer I can only assume you are not intended to compete with Yoplait/Danon - neither in the industrial scale production size,  nor for the cheap product price point or brand positioning. You can certainly focus on becoming the super-premium rustic artisan yogurt brand with the healthy qualities of the good old days - and sell your products at a hefty premium price point (and rightfully so!)  You can still thicken things up more naturally: Use fattier milk, sweeten with honey or maple syrup, use pectin and/or milk powder. Lots to do before you pull out the gums and stabilizers.

I make yogurt very similarly to how Sailor does his.  I find that the different milks and cultures make a huge difference in how tangy and how lumpy and thick it becomes.

Here are some brands of yogurt I sometime purchase, all of which sell premium yogurt (quite expensive, 50%-3--% more than Danon/Yoplait) whith emphasis on quality milk and non homogenized texture. These things fly off the shelf. People love them and are willing to pay:

http://www.maplehillcreamery.com/Maple_Hill/Home.html
http://www.browncowfarm.com/our-yogurt/cream-top
http://www.skyr.com/products_overview.html
http://erivandairy.com/products.aspx
http://liberteyogourt.com/en/yogurt-mediterranee-products/index.sn
http://www.rachelsorganic.co.uk/product-range
http://www.ronnybrook.com/product.html
http://www.blacksheepcheese.com/yogurt_plain_and_maple.html
http://www.bellwetherfarms.com/sheeps-milk-yogurt-/
http://www.redwoodhill.com/yogurt

Read the ingredients and marketing on these and see how these successful companies pride themselves on not using artificial stuff. Some even refuse to use sugar or pectin. They sell in stores for $1.50 to $3.00 a cup as opposed to the $0.69 to $1.09 for the stuff with the stabilizers. There are a million more. High end yogurts are really catching on!

Just something to think about

Gustav

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2011, 05:11:08 AM »
Thnx a mil. I really appreciate all the help. The problem is that people tend to go with something their farmiliar with eg. if you were to put 2 cheeses nect to each other, 1 without colourant and 1 with colourant and chances are they will go with the yellow one as that is what'savailable in stores. If they see the whey on top they think it's going off.  We the producers understand it, but to explain it to every customer is very difficult. It seems that the stabilisers prevent the whey from seperating & that's the main reason I use it. I fully understand how it works and that it's more healthy, but I think I will do yoghurt without stabilisers on request as it is to much of a hassle to explain the difference to the suppliers. I am a very busy person and rather give them something ther farmiliar with with no questions than spending frustrating time having to explain the reasons to everyone over and over. Here in South Africa health yoghurts arent something that's very popular, people tend to rather go for the cheap stuff, but as I said, maybe I will get a poster or something explaining it and put it up in the supplier stores with a couple and see how it goes.

I will make some tomorrow and let you know how it goes. Thanks again for all the advice.

Gustav

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2011, 06:17:26 AM »
You were 100% correct. Adding the sugar at the start was the main problem it seems. The yoghurt with only milk and cultures incubated at 42'C for 7 hours came out nice & thick. I will propably use this method from now on & just add the info to the labels. Thnx for the help guys.

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #9 on: June 01, 2011, 07:04:45 PM »
Wow! That's fantastic! Glad we could help troubleshoot this. I made yogurt for 2 years before I dared touching cheese (except Labaneh cheese of course which is just a super-drained salted yogurt).  I love a good yogurt!

Tomer1

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #10 on: June 01, 2011, 08:22:33 PM »
Some bacterias cant handle the (sugar) beet...

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #11 on: June 01, 2011, 08:48:24 PM »
It's not that they can't handle it, its that they handle it too much... The bacterium consume sugars, be it lactose, fructose, glucose, sucrose, etc. The bacterial activity in yogurt or cheese relies on the bacterial consumption of lactose and its modification.  The minute you introduce new sugar into the milk, you have exposed the bacteria to a competing source of nutrition that is readily available for them.  As they go to work on the new sugar, they no longer work on the lactose and stop yogurting your milk...

Some bacteria have an order of sugar consumption. For example, proprionic bacteria would not consume any fructose before it is done consuming all the lactose that is available to it.  Other bacteria may prefer the other sugar and therefore stop working on the lactose until they are done with them. The problem is that a teaspoon of sugar contains SO MUCH more sugar than a cup of milk that there is enough food for them to go forever before they are done fermenting the sugar and move back to the lactose. By then the yogurt may be spoiled and competing pathogenic bacteria may use the opportunity of no lactose competition. It will consume it and out-compete the yogurt bacteria.

This is also why one of my suggestions to Gustav was to try other bacteria. Perhaps another culture would prefer the lactose, no matter how much refined beet or cane sugar is in the yogurt.  It's worth looking into.

Sailor Con Queso

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #12 on: June 02, 2011, 04:12:20 AM »
Many bacteria are symbiotic and depend on other bacteria to produce byproducts that they in turn use as food. So you have to think in terms of the overall ecosystem and not just individual bacteria or strains. Propionic is a good example. It does not usually use lactose directly. Starter bacteria are busy converting lactose to lactic acid while some lactic acid bacteria (LAB), particularly Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus helveticus and Lb. delbrueckii subsp. lactis, convert lactose to lactate. The Propionic acid bacteria (PAB) then convert lactate to propionic acid, acetic acid and carbon dioxide (which causes the holes in Swiss). That is why you can't maintain a traditional milk based mother culture of Propionic. It needs lactate as a food source, not lactose. That is also one reason why Swiss types have to go thru a cool phase to maximize lactate formation, prior to a warmer eye formation phase.

iratherfly

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Re: Yoghurt - Flaky Texture, From Adding Sugar At Start
« Reply #13 on: June 02, 2011, 06:00:15 AM »
Right. That's a good way of putting it.  What I was saying in a very general way is the different bacteria behaves differently and if you are putting sugar in and it no longer behaves, chances are that it switched food source, so either use a different bacteria or eliminate the sugar addition.

Proprionic may not be the particular example but it is a diauxic bacteria and that's exactly the behavior I am talking about. It prefers lactate and won't even touch fructose even if its available in abundance ...but when it runs out of lactate it will focus 100% on consuming that fructose (which it would have never touched before...).

We can only assume that other bacteria may display similar behavior but maybe prefer fructose, glucose etc over lactate or lactose so when you drop sugar in -they stop whatever it is they were doing and go for the feast.