“Oh No! What Happened Here!? A Fermentation Gone South”

Posted by admin as live-culture, probiotic,

So what happened? Why did my fermenting foods project, yogurt making bonanza, end up as curds and whey? Any Guesses?

Here is what I did: I super cleaned my VitaMix and my gallon jars with my top secret super cleaning routine, heated the milk to 100 ish degrees, added the yogurt cultures, blended in the VitaMix some more, and placed in my clean one gallon jars. Here is a special note, dear reader, if you are like myself and have more than one size and diameter of one gallon jar: perhaps you should check to see before you start cleaning if the jar you are planning to use is the short and squat one gallon jar as opposed to the taller one gallon jar that, yes, you guessed it, does not freaking fit in the Excalibur. Aye Carumba!

So after I wasted more time shuffling and cleaning jars with the super secret process I pulled all the trays out of the Excalibur, placed jars in with a kitchen towel secured over the mouth with a rubber band, fired that bad girl up to 105, set the timer for 12 hours and told her I would check her in the morning.

Cr@p! What happened here? My ratio was off of inoculating yogurt to milk. As in, use more than one tablespoon of starter yogurt for an entire gallon of milk, Rowan.

So I ended up with curds and whey, which is still a fermented food, but not the yogurt I was hoping for. The curds, the white on the top has a similarity to lebne (a Lebanese style, I think) which is a fermented cheese that has the taste and texture of a cottage cheese/sour cream blend. I love this style of cheese on chili, yes.

So don’t throw it away! Bake a potato, make chili, bust out the onion soup packet and some chips, this is still definitely edible and most probably delicious, just different from the original intent.

And what to do with the whey? Well almost anything according to Sally Fallon of the Weston Price Foundation.

So keep fermenting your food, and don’t give up if your result is different than your desired result.
Be brave, get cultured!
Rowan

p.s. feel free to share your own learning curve.