souring raw goat milk

[sequoia]

Hello Fermenters,

A few days ago I got a jar full of fresh goat's milk, and wanted to experiment with souring it and then straining it through a cloth to separate it. I had the jar sitting undisturbed with a thin towel over it for three days, and the milk only just barely started to taste a bit sour. Feeling a little worried about letting it sit out for so long, I went ahead and strained it, but there was virtually no creamy stuff and it all went through the cloth save a few little splotches (though these did taste rather like sour cream!).

Does anyone have suggestions for why the milk didn't thicken, as I've read that it should? Also, is there really any reason to worry about letting raw milk sit out for a few days, or was I just letting popular paranoid culture get to me? Should I have let it sit longer, until it was noticeably thicker?

Thanks!

[ryen]

A goat farmer I stayed with for a few days told me that her raw goat milk doesn't seperate and cannot be seperated.

[Galinda98]

Actually, having grown up on a farm with a herd of goats, I can irrifutably say that raw goat's milk most certainly can be separated, but only by using a cream separator. I fondly recall holding a cup under the cream spout as the thinner milk poured out the milk spout and the cream poured out the cream spout...I LOVED fresh cream! Unbeknownst to the average Joe and Jane out there, goat's milk is NATURALLY homogenized. If you were to place a quart bottle of goat's milk beside a quart bottle of cow's milk in the 'fridge overnight, the next morning there might be a small, oh, say 1" crown of cream at the top of the goat's milk, but close to 5-6" of cream in the cow's milk. The reason that cow's milk is homogenized is for that very reason; to keep the cream blended it. You don't have to do that with goat's milk. Another interesting tid-bit---if one has excema, drink raw goat's milk continually. It doesn't cure excema, but it does control it...from the inside out. I didn't develop issues with my skin until I got married and left home, and had to drink pasteurized/homogenized cow's milk. About as unhealthy as it comes. There was a time there when I felt like I didn't like milk anymore...that wasn't the case; it was just that I was used to healthy raw goat's milk, and the muck from the store was bland!

[rollingearthsong]

Whether or not the cream separates out does not matter when souring the milk. I set about a half quart of fresh raw goats milk out and in about four or five days (the weather was cool) it had soured and clabbered up very nicely. I took half and used it to get a sourdough starter going and used the other half to inoculate a bit less than a quart of raw goat milk. It has been less than a day and that is already thickening and souring. I read that the first batch of naturally clabbered milk might not have the best taste, and that the flavor improved with subsequent cultures.

I am looking for a recipe for making raw tvorog.. a russian cheese from clabbered milk that is heated slightly to separate curds from whey..