Category Archives: Cheesemaking

Goats and goats cheese

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I’ve recently been learning about goats.

Goats produce milk as soon as they’ve had a kid and will continue to produce milk as long as the kid is still suckling or they are being milked.

MILKING:

  • Goats have to learn to be milked but once they have, they are quite happy to stand and let you get on with it.
  • You can either use the knuckle technique (thumb knuckle against the teat and then wrap the other fingers round) or the flat palm technique (press with the thumb and index finger and then wrap the other fingers round)
  • It’s easiest to milk both udders at the same time by alternating between them and holding them between the goat’s back legs.
  • You need to let the teat fill up and then cut of at the top and squeeze the milk out.
  • Goats need to be milked once a day.

PASTEURISATION:

  • Goats milk should be pasteurised before you use it. You can either pasteurise it by gently bringing it to the boil and letting it boil up twice before turning the heat off. This method, however, has a negative effect on the cheese so I prefer to gently heat it to 66ºC and keeping it at this temperature for 30 minutes.
  • If you pasteurise by boiling it, milk rennet doesn’t seem to work and if you want a harder cheese it’s best to use cider vinegar.

Goat milk butter

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Today we were given another bucket of goat’s milk by the neighbour as I had one lot of soft cheese still draining from the batch I made yesterday, we thought it would be a good idea to look into alternative things you can do with the goat’s milk. Brainwave: butter. First we pasteurised the milk in the normal way: strain into a saucepan and bring gently to the boil. Let it rise twice and then remove from the heat. We then found and cleaned some wide-mouthed jam jars. We poured the milk into the jars and left to cool before putting int he fridge.

The idea is that after 7-10 days you skim off the cream and then shake to get the butter.

I’ll keep you informed of how it goes.

Skim cream into a clean jar.

Let the jar sit at room temperature for an hour.

Shake the jar for 10-15 minutes until you can hear the sound of a lump of butter inside.

Remove the lid and rinse with cold water until the water runs clear.

Pat into shape or into a mould or small dish with the back of a teaspoon to remove as much water as possible.