On Friday I brought home a little under 2 gallons of lovely milk and stored it in the frig. Today each jar had about 1 inch of cream at the top, which I skimmed off to make ice cream!! Is the milk left over considered non-fat, or kind of close to it? I doubt I removed all the cream, and I am wondering if there is a way to know what the remainder might be.
No, the fat won't full separate from the milk just by gravity. Based on taste I've always thought it comes out to be about 2%ish. And doing the math, I usually skim about 1/2 gallon of cream from a 4 gallon pot, and from that 1/2 gallon churn about 1 pound of butter. Subtracting that amount of fat from the remaining milk, it comes out in my case to about 2.2 to 2.5% fat, after starting with 5% fat (which we learned from having a milk test).