Has anyone else here made yogurt at home before? I just got done making my first jar and was wondering if anyone else has done this before and has any tips regarding it.
In case anyone was wondering, here are the steps I took to make it:
Bring whole milk almost to boil (Add flavorings during this part, I steeped a chai tea bag in it and mixed in some vanilla extract here)
Cool whole milk down to around room temperature
Mix whole milk with about 1/16th as much yogurt (Make sure yogurt has "Live active bacterial cultures" listed in the ingredients
Pour mixture into mason jar and seal lid
Place jar in water bath at 43ºC and let sit for about 5 hours
Remove jar from bath and refridgerate until ready to eat
Those are the steps that I have done so far, and here are some pictures of how it turned out:
"Very smooth after mixing, seems a bit too watery for my tastes in yogurt"
I went ahead and tasted some, It is definitely yogurt although I'm not too sure about my vanilla chai tea flavour. The tea has added some unpleasant bitterness and I could have definitely added some more vanilla. I went ahead and mixed in some sugar and the flavor became much more bearable. But I still am not a fan of the consistency.
In an attempt to thicken the yogurt I have secured a coffee filter under the lid. The jar is currently inverted like this in the fridge in another container. Hopefully this will allow the whey to drip out from the yogurt and make a much thicker end product.
If the filter does not fix this I think the solution next time might be to either have it sit in the bath for longer, add more yogurt to begin with, or use a different starting yogurt. Has anyone done something like this? If so, what would you suggest? Also, if you have not done this, I would love to hear some questions or suggestions for other flavorings to try.
Thanks for reading! This was my first post and I hope it was interesting to someone!
I've made yogurt a few times with a yogurt maker. It's basically the same procedure you used. I tried a dry Bulgarian culture and a plain yogurt from the supermarket. The yogurt was good but a little thin for my taste. I also drained the whey from some to thicken it but that made it extremely tart. Considering how inexpensive yogurt is I've gone back to using supermarket brands for now but may experiment further in the future. I also made some sauerkraut and wine this year. The sauerkraut was exceptional and the wine turned out pretty good considering the starting material.
You might consider using the runny yoghurt as a base for lassi (mango lassi).
I haven't made yoghurt myself yet, but my mom used to make kefir and kombucha when I was young - so I know how fermenting stuff can be quite interesting. (She also made elderflower "champagne" but half the bottles burst usually - so only take plastic ones if you want to go that route.)
@alex2 Seeing the texture did make me think of using it in something like lassi in the future. My next attempts will still be trying to make a thicker product though. I am also considering using this process to make raita in the future.
Anyways, I left the yogurt to strain through the coffee filter for a few hours to very little result. The filter had absorbed some whey and only a few drops had actually fallen through. After opening the yogurt it seemed about the same as how I had left it. Here is a picture:
I went ahead and mixed in some more sugar until it is the sweetness I am used to with store-bought yogurts. I ended up having to add a suprisingly large amount. Perhaps this my flavor choice or perhaps it says something about store-bought yogurt. Anyways, after adding a bunch of sugar it was actually quite tasty despite not being the texture I wanted.
I think my next trial will be using a lower temperature and leaving it for a bit longer.
