Homemade Yogurt

I recently made a batch of yogurt at home. Brought 6 parts 1% milk to 180*F, cooled to 110*F, inoculated with 1 part 1% store-bought active culture yogurt. Incubated about about 98*F for 10 hours in a Euro Cuisine digital automatic yogurt maker. The result was 2/3 whey, 1/3 yogurt, exceptionally acidic, and had the texture of very fine cottage cheese. Any ideas as to what is happening here? Thanks!

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grant

Lots of whey and small curds are signs of too hot for too long=too much acidity which leads to small curds.

Check in on it sooner or inoculate at a cooler temp.

ttpoker

Just came across this thread, good timing because I happen to be making Yoghurt today in my L'Equip dehydrator (6 hours @110f). I'm interested in increasing the yield by using an immersion circulator, can yoghurt be safely made within a vacuum sealed pouch placed inside of a water bath, or are there anaerobic issues at play which would get in the way of my goal? What about using a mason jar inside of a water bath? Pros & Cons anyone?

FrankM_3301

Well, before I got a circulator, I used mason jars inside the jacuzzi (set at 103F). Worked like a charm! So, I assume the jars in the water bath with be fine.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@Frank, love that.

Brandon_34695

I did that in a circulator before to set up some creme fraiche when it was a little too cold in the house. Left the lid off.

Chris_Young_80640

I actually wrote about sous vide yogurt a long time ago:

http://forum.chefsteps.com/discussion/comment/31/#Comment_31

Chris

Penny_20849

Nathan, I have better luck using a variety of yogurt culture powders in packets than using store bought cartons of yogurt, whether or not they are labeled as having active cultures or not. A wide variety of yogurt and kefir cultures are available online in home use size packets. I make mine by heating the milk (any percent fat) as you did, cooling it to 110 degrees F, then adding the culture powder. I use a two quart glass cylindrical container with a glass lid. After I add the culture I put the container on my stove on the warming burner on low and wrap it with a thick dish towel. It takes about 12 hours that way. Making Kefir is even easier because the milk does not need to be heated to 180. Heating to about 80 degrees F is fine. It is not as sensitive to temperature. I follow the same practice of keeping it warm on my electric stove warming burner.

Raymond_132067

This is an older thread but in case someone reviews it, I thought some new information would be welcome. I did a low temperature (40C) for 24 hrs for yogurt. Instead of heating the milk to a higher temperature (additional pasteurization I assume), I used an unopened quart of milk, let it come to RT while the water bath warmed up and then put into a quart glass jar (hinged lid and rubber gasket assembly). The milk is already pasteurized was my thought. Also a time saving step. I've used a variety of different sources (powder, commercial). Turned out smooth and tart.

One neat thing about using commercial strains (from grocery store) is there's been an effort to find naturally occurring strains of bacteria that are resistant to a type of infection that will kill your yogurt from time to time (phage). So you benefit from their work in a sense. However, I've also found using commercial yogurt makes for an initial thinner texture at first. After multiple generations, it will gradually thicken (say ~15 in my experience). If important, say for a dessert, I suppose modifications with gelatin would help achieve a thicker texture. The addition of dried milk has also been mentioned in my research over the years but I've never tried.