"Quick" clabber

[MrsKK]

Okay, it still takes about 8-12 hours minimum (24 hours at 55-60 degree room temps), but the first batch tastes good, which I've never achieved with my previous versions of making clabber.

I used 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk to 1 quart of skimmed raw milk...since the buttermilk is the culture, this could be made with pasturized/homogenized milk as well.  I just whisked them together in a jar, put a clean washcloth over the top with a rubber band to keep the cover on, and put it on top of my refrigerator.  In 24 hours it was as thick as yogurt.

When I want to make it up quicker, I have put the jar in a saucepan full of hot tap water.  It then thickens in about 8 hours with my changing the water a couple of times.  It would probably thicken more quickly if the milk was warmed before adding the buttermilk, too.

I've been using that original quart to culture clabber for the pigs and chickens (about a cup to 3 gallons of milk), to culture cream for butter making (yum!), and for cottage cheese.  I'll soon culture another quart of milk to have an on-going starter.

[susanky]

I'm still trying to understand the microbiology of it all.  How is this different from a mother culture of buttermilk.  How is making 'clabber' different from making more buttermilk?
Susan

[Sailor Con Queso]

Buttermilk is a Mesophilic bacterial mix. Yogurt (active) is a Thermophile. I personally do not do true mother cultures, but do a primer culture instead. Let me explain...

MrsKK is making "another quart of milk to have an ON-GOING starter. She will use this to inoculate future batches. This cannot be done indefinitely because of contamination, bacterial colony degradation, mutations, etc. But it is very common to do this for buttermilk and yogurt. A couple of tablespoons of yogurt in some prepared milk and you've got the next batch going.

A primer culture on the other hand is NOT an ongoing starter. Instead, a fresh, pure source of bacteria is used every time to make a fresh starter culture.

Clabber is just another term for curdled milk. This happens because the mesophilic lactic bacteria produce lactic acid, which in turn "clabbers" the milk.

[MrsKK]

Well, actually, I will be using this on an on-going basis, at least until my cow dries off. 

By quick clabber, I'm using buttermilk as a starter, rather than allowing the naturally occurring bacteria to thicken the milk, as I have done in previous lactations.

[susanky]

OK, I'm getting it.  But, to clarify the teminology.  In this case, 'clabber' IS buttermilk.  Right?  By adding buttermilk to milk, it caused it to sour, making 'clabber'.  This clabber/buttermilk,  will now be used as a mesophilic starter.  I guess my question is, if we didn't make more buttermilk, how is it different? 
Susan

[MrsKK]

It is different from my normal, slower method of making clabber, which doesn't use buttermilk at all. 

In this case, it is a substitute for buttermilk...or in my case, so I don't have to keep buying buttermilk.  Not that buttermilk is pricey, it's just that I have so much milk available to me (4 gallons a day!) that it doesn't make sense for me to buy any more of it.

[susanky]

Got it.  Thanks.  I also have access to raw milk.  Someday I'll try making clabber the 'slow' way.  I'm just uneasy about what else will grow in there.  Just something psychological about adding the bacteria you want  to grow (buttermilk) rather than guessing what is in there.  I'll get used to it as I do it more I'm sure.
Susan

[FarmerJd]

Susan, I have the same mindset as you. My grandmothers both made buttermilk every week without adding a buttermilk culture, They depended on the crock to "seed" the new culture. My mom wanted to get more consistent results so she started using the commercial buttermilk as a starter. My Dad says there was always a difference in Mom's and Grand-mom's biscuits.   I guess the wild culture had a little more zing to it. I went with Mom's method and I make buttermilk every week. At times, I have just let the crock culture it after using it a few weeks and not boiling it out.
I drink a lot of buttermilk so I like a little more consistent product. If I was going to cook with it though I would definitely try the "wild" approach.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Susan/Farmer,

As a microbiologist, I'm with you. I don't like unknown organisms in my food, although they are always present. I like predictable outcomes.

[justsocat]

I used to make cheese with clabber as the meso starter for about a year. I used small part of previous clabber to make a new batch. The taste and smell of cheese were very good and almost the same every make. But I can't say the same about structure and texture. Those were very inconsistent. And I ended up with contamination in all cheeses and cultures.
I like Sailor's method of making mother culture once and want to give it a try. But now i use only dry cultures.
Can anybody for god's sake explain to me, how those ancient cheesemakers went on without Danisco and Hansen etc.?

[linuxboy]

The microbiological quality of early cheeses was very poor. That's why the earliest examples of cheeses we find used very simple technology and relied on helped molds to both protect the cheese rind and give it flavor. For example, both brie and roquefort are very old cheeses. Once you start aging brie and blue in a cave, it does not take long for those strains to dominate the environment, and outcompete most everything else. In terms of the lactic cultures, so long as the curd acidifies in brie and blues, the molds take care of the rest.

As for the hard cheeses, many early ones were alpine style that used thermophilic bacteria. So effectively, whenever the cheeses were made, the milk was thermized. Also, propionic acid served as a natural protectorant.

In terms of other cheeses, you're absolutely right. There was quite a lot of contamination. And many cheeses were eaten young because they couldn't age well.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Historically, cheeses were very inconsistent and from batch to batch often were completely different from the previous. Beaufort for example started off as a simple lactic cheese and changed many times over the years. A lot of this was because their starter was not standardized like modern cultures.