This stuff is great for my blood sugar! I ate the same amount of My Big Fat Greek Yogurt as I did Dannon Low-Fat the other day and almost had a hypo. Then I had to eat 20 cherries. Next time, I'll just put the cherries in the yogurt.

Well after all this my yogurt is finally in the oven. I need a better way, because my oven turns off at 150ºf. I have the jars in water in the oven, but I have to go in evey few minutes to check the temps. So far it looks like turning on the oven for 5 mins then leaving it off for a half an hour is working.

I need a better way. I have a coffee warmer I am testing with a pot of water, maybe I can use it in a cooler.

I read in another source to put your container on a heating pad on low. I haven't tried it yet though.

I used to make a lot of yogurt, and never used a yogurt maker. I sometimes made it with half&half or heavy cream! It was delicious when it worked, but the results were very unreliable. I used Yogourmet and an oven with a pilot light, and sometimes I would preheat it to 150 and then let it cool.

I recommend a thermometer and a cooler/yogurt maker -- L. Thermophilus is the bacteria that makes yogurt firm, and it likes to be at 110 F. If you do choose half & half or heavy cream, avoid the ultra-pasteurized kind; it will not work.

Our whole family has stopped eating dairy. Now I make coconut milk yogurt, which is super easy once you get the cultures started. 12 hours at summer room temperature and it's done. (Getting the cultures started is a bit complicated, though.)

Mike

The ultra-pasturized does make things unpredictable, but I have had it work. Not always though.

I used powdered milk on my initial batch with a cup of cream and it worked very well. I didn't have to heat the powdered milk and I heated the cream to bring the powder and water to the right temperature. It worked well and I have very thick yogurt after I drained it overnight.

Can you describe that process? I've made coconut milk yogurt before too and just did exactly the same thing as I do with milk based yogurt. It didn't really come out as tangy or firm as I'd like so I used gelatin too.

My coconut milk yogurt has been a total failure, so yeah...details??

Ok, here goes.

Since I'm totally casein-free, I didn't want to use a dairy-based yogurt starter. Instead I made a West Indian condiment called pineapple vinegar. It's not actually vinegar at all. I found it in the cookbook "Nourishing Traditions:"

Pineapple Vinegar

skin and core from 1 pineapple
2 quarts filtered water
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes

Place all ingredients in a bowl, cover and leave at room temperature about 36 hours. Skim and remove pineapple pieces. Strain vinegar into clean jars and cover tightly.
This will keep in a cool place for several months.

To make coconut yogurt, I put 2 tablespoons of that in a pint jar with a can of full-fat coconut milk. Stir well, cover tightly and leave at room temperature 12 hours. When the jar is finished, I don't clean it out, I just add more coconut milk and repeat. I've been doing this every day for a couple weeks and it's still coming out great.

I suppose it matter what type of ants you have, but a lifetime ago, I dined on fudge-covered ants and I am still here to tell the tale. And to be honest, between the fudge and the nuts, I couldn't tell what was nut or ant.

I believe ants actually have a lot of fat (and good fat too). But lactobacilli are anaerobic bacteria, so you can seal your yogurt container to keep ants out.

Well, if my yogurt makes yogurt I'll be surprised. I fell asleep reading and the temp went down to 75.

You need a Florida room. The ants weren't so bad.

Well, my yogurt making is not going very well.

The first batch was disgusting. I let it get both too warm and too cold, I used ultra pasturized cream, not reading the posts about it until about an hour too late. It came out as unpleasantly thick cream with a musty smell and a sickly color.

So I went out and found a Salton Yogurt maker at a thrift store for $2. I got a proper thermometer. Then I stopped by the Health Food Coop and got some raw milk with the cream still in it.

Oddly the cream seemed more like butter. It was lumpy and parts of it floated to top as melted looking fat when I heated it.

But I pressed on because it was what I had.

Then I did something stupid and fairly typical for me. When the milk on the double boiler got to 185 I took it off the heat and put in the culture. Then remembered that you were supposed to wait for it to cool down first. So I waited, then put in more culture, assuming that the first batch was dead.

OK, put it in the yogurt maker and walked away. 5 hours later I started making dinner and unplugged the yogurt maker, thinking it was the coffee machine, and plugged in my food processor. 5 hours later I discovered my mistake.

At this point I looked at the putative yogurt and it had a bright yellow layer of butter looking stuff on the top. The cream itself was semisolid, but very yucky looking. I put it in the fridge anyway and this morning it seems more like yogurt under the butter layer, and tastes like yogurt, but it's not really solid and the butter doesn't taste like butter so I am leary of the whole batch.

I'm going to try again today, discarding the current yogurt and hoping to get it right this time.

Basic rule of fermenting: If it smells utterly vile, don't eat it. Otherwise, it's probably ok. Let your taste be your guide.

I often got runny yogurt when I didn't control the temperature just right. It was still perfectly edible though. I used to make whey by leaving raw milk out for days. The recipe said it would separate into two parts, but I actually got three parts: cream on top, curd in the middle, and whey on the bottom. That sounds a bit like what you had. If so, you can make it thicker by straining out the whey (put it in a colander with some cheesecloth, cover, and wait several hours. Don't squeeze.) Save the whey in the fridge - it's a great culture for all kinds of ferments. If you have pets, give them your failed projects. They won't eat it if they don't think it's good for them.

That's odd about the butter on top. I'd be curious to hear from the farm where you got it - do they have especially creamy milk, or could it have gotten churned in transportation? Ask them what kind of cows they have.

If you start with raw milk, you don't really need to pasteurize it first (that's what heating to 185 does). In fact, you don't need to add cultures at all, though both pasteurizing and adding cultures will give you a more consistent result.

I was always impatient with my yogurt and added the cultures before it cooled off enough. Definitely works better if you wait. I understand that if you add too much culture, it can get "crowded out" and doesn't work as well. I'm not exactly sure what this means, but I always had more success when I did everything by the book the first time.