Question on making Butter?

[nao57]

So recently the prices for Country Crock margarine, and normal butter at the grocery store are IMMENSELY high. Like so bad that ... I mean before now it was never really worth it cost wise to make butter because you actually lost more money than money saved. But recently that's changed. Sometimes the country crock tub price is like around 5 bucks.

This made me think recently that it would actually be possibly valuable to just make butter using a gallon of whole milk. Recipes and videos how to do this are plentiful. Its also remarkably easy and not a long process.

But my question; How much volume of milk does it take to make.... X amount of Butter? Nobody has information in butter making videos about what the volume change looks like, how much whole milk, does it take to get... how much butter?

I was curious to ask this here. I'm sure someone has tried this. And we're lucky to be able to think about this now instead of later when the economy gets worse.

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Edited in later; made mistake quoting price. Actually its close to $7 bucks for the normal sized tub now. :O :O :O

 

[Sally PB]

I'd like to know this too...

 

[The Welch Chickens]

Interesting! I'll be watching this thread!

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

We used to make butter in a food processor. We used straight cream- no milk. (Salt was added after it was made.) I don't think it's possible to make it with pasteurized milk. Most milk I'd go with is raw milk and skim the cream off the top after it was a few days old. (If you’ve ever drank raw milk, you'd see that a quarter of whole milk is cream.)

 

[NatJ]

But my question; How much volume of milk does it take to make.... X amount of Butter? Nobody has information in butter making videos about what the volume change looks like, how much whole milk, does it take to get... how much butter?

Butter is mostly fat. So check the labels on a milk jug and a butter package, and pay attention to the fat.

At least for USA foods, the nutrition labels will information like how much fat per serving, and how many servings per package. Multiply those two numbers, and you know how much fat is in the whole jug of milk.

Then figure out how much fat is in the entire package of butter (multiply fat per serving by number of servings.)

Then see how many jugs of milk it takes to give the same amount of fat as the package of butter.

I do not know if you can get ALL the fat in the milk to turn into butter, or if some will be missed. But you certainly cannot get more fat than what is in the milk jug.

This will not be 100% accurate, but at least a starting point to give a ballpark number.

 

[tlcmurphy]

You require cream to make butter, I dont think you can do it with milk. It’s super quick in a blender/mixer and from what I’ve read 16oz of cream will make ~6.5 oz of butter (roughly a stick and a half). The remainder is buttermilk.
You’d need 2.5 cartons of cream to make a pound of butter, I don’t think it would be cheaper, but it would be good!

 

[tlcmurphy]

You require cream to make butter, I dont think you can do it with milk. It’s super quick in a blender/mixer and from what I’ve read 16oz of cream will make ~6.5 oz of butter (roughly a stick and a half). The remainder is buttermilk.
You’d need 2.5 cartons of cream to make a pound of butter, I don’t think it would be cheaper, but it would be good!

You can also make fantastic whipped cream if you don’t beat it as long, yum!

 

[tripletfeb]

When I used to make butter, I would fill a pint jar with raw milk(yes, it was raw milk, not just cream) and shake it like crazy. The butter would eventually fill about 1/3 the jar. Note that this was just a few times that I made it. I get my butter from my family farm, which is a Land O Lakes farm, so I luck out in that I cut out the middle man grocery stores

 

[tripletfeb]

@nao57 you can look at stores like Lehman's, they sell butter churns and different things. Might give you more of an idea on what all is involved in the process

 

[tripletfeb]

When I used to make butter, I would fill a pint jar with raw milk(yes, it was raw milk, not just cream) and shake it like crazy. The butter would eventually fill about 1/3 the jar. Note that this was just a few times that I made it. I get my butter from my family farm, which is a Land O Lakes farm, so I luck out in that I cut out the middle man grocery stores

Ok, so, the more I'm remembering, the cream WAS separated from the milk. And it was the cream that became butter, so, my apologies for the confusion. I also found this helpful website on how much butter can be made from a gallon of raw milk. I clearly need to get into butter making again!