Yogurt

When I got back into yogurt making I had a 4 litre jug of moo juice, my pressure cooker could handle that volume so I thought what the heck. After making my yogurt I separated it into two 2 litre jugs; there I was over the course of a few days eating the first jug when I noticed this yellow stuff at the top, a little concerned I looked at what it could be? Turns out it was the whey separating from the yogurt, not feeling up to wanting Greek yogurt I stuck it into the freezer and continued on. The yogurt I was eating was separating but hey just stir it and all would be good. When it came time to use the frozen stuff, I thought rather then stirring the whey in why not just make it Greek? Simple process I have the tools to do it, rather than cheese cloth I have nut milk bags that I would fill up with yogurt and stick in a strainer suspended over a bowl and leave overnight. I no longer eat yogurt any other way, it took me a bit of time to work up the courage to try drinking whey but after making some blue berry Greek yogurt I thought I would give it a sip. It tasted great so I am not going to let it go to waste any more.

That brings me to yesterday, I royally messed up some yogurt so while I was doing “my own research” looking for ways to save it I found out I really couldn’t but I also found out about labneh, or a yogurt cheese. My original plan yesterday was just to remove whey from about 2 litres of yogurt, I was going to be doing it any ways so why not do it all at once? I got thinking about this labneh thing and got looking up some recipes as to how to make it, as the first recipe I saw said it took two hours to make Greek yogurt, that is barely removing any of the whey so I didn’t trust it when it said it takes 24 hours. After researching the topic more I found other recipes saying it takes 24 to 48 hours so I guess I can believe it, haven’t decided on how long I am going to wait but I think it will be more then 24!

Any who it had been doing its thing for about 8 hours when I thought I should see how much whey had been removed, glad I did because the bottom of the yogurt was sitting in the whey so I was going to have to remove the whey so the yogurt could lose more. I am not used to removing whey from this much yogurt, it’s typically something more like 250 ml not 2000 ml of yogurt. When I make Greek yogurt I typically let it sit about 12 hours and have never thought about how much whey was removed versus how much yogurt was left. After about 7 hours I removed close to 1000 ml of whey; it was a shock to me to see how much whey was in yogurt, after thinking about it I realized it shouldn’t have come as a surprise most of an animal is water so most of the lactose mammals make must be as well.