HM Yoghurt - What went wrong?

daisyroots_2

It's years since I've made yoghurt, but my Ma (who is Dutch) taught me to do it, before you could buy yoghurt in England, and I think this is what my Gran taught her. Most of the above advice sounds good - use live, natural yoghurt - but two things I was taught were crucial:

1. You must put the yoghurt in a vessel taller than it is wide - no bowls in other words.
2. The yoghurt must take as long as possible to cool. We didn't have a fridge anyway (I'm talking ante deluvian here) but my Ma wouldn't have used it for this anyway. We wrapped the jug in loads of tea towels and left it by the bread bin overnight. In the morning it was always cool and set, ready for breakfast.

I'm not sure what a yoghurt making kit is, but we used to heat the milk in a pan to blood temperature, tested with a little finger, when it stings slightly, it's ready. Then beat a teaspoon of live yoghurt into the milk, make sure it's dissolved properly, pour into jug, wrap in loads of tea towels, etc. Occasionally it failed, then we simply heated it up again, added a teaspoon of live yoghurt, etc.

saving-grace

Atalanta wrote: »

saving-grace wrote: »

As I said above, I use a flask and have no experience of an Easyyo but I wonder if temperature is an issue here?

Do you just warm the flask up with hot water first?

No I don't warm the flask. But I put the UHT milk in a jug in the microwave and bring it up to blood temperature as daisyroots describes in her post above. Then stir in a tablespoon of live yoghurt, a tablespoon of dried milk powder and into the flask for about 8 hours.
Its important to heat the milk to blood temperature as too hot and you'll kill the yoghurt-making bacteria, too cold and they won't multiply. I used to have a thermometer but I broke it and now just use my finger to test.

[Deleted User]

I ditched my easy yo equipment after three years and bought a lakeland yoghurt maker. I have had tremendous success from day one. I used uht organic skimmed milk (MOO brand) 2tbs of powdered milk and 2 tbs of rachels low fat organic plain yoghurt. Since then I have used a bit of my own made yoghurt as the starter and every single time have had fantastic results

reasons for ditching:
I wanted a good range of probiotics
I wanted organic
I got fed up of easy yo tastes and sugar content
I wanted cheapness as easy yo is quite expensive

The hm yoghurt I am making these days is thick and very creamy and totally gorgeous with no liquid on the top. I kept the easy yo containers and I decant my yoghurt into them as they store easily in the fridge door. The yoghurt is not sour and I can just add a few blueberries and a bit of granola to get one scrummy dessert

side effect: an obvious change to my digestion. The yoghurt I make now makes me feel terrific.

Atalanta

Thanks for your reply Saving Grace. I'm still mulling over all the different ways people seem to have for making their own yoghurt...I never realised there were so many different ways of doing it.

saving-grace wrote: »

Atalanta wrote: »

No I don't warm the flask. But I put the UHT milk in a jug in the microwave and bring it up to blood temperature as daisyroots describes in her post above. Then stir in a tablespoon of live yoghurt, a tablespoon of dried milk powder and into the flask for about 8 hours.
Its important to heat the milk to blood temperature as too hot and you'll kill the yoghurt-making bacteria, too cold and they won't multiply. I used to have a thermometer but I broke it and now just use my finger to test.

EmptyPurse

Last week I bought a yoghurt-maker from Lakeland. However, despite following the instructions to the letter, I ended up with warm milk rather than yoghurt after eight hours. Any ideas where I might have gone wrong?

Hawthorn

Um, from making yoghurt years back - did you use a live 'starter'?

I'm racking my brains now LOL

Penelope_Penguin

EmptyPurse wrote: »

Last week I bought a yoghurt-maker from Lakeland. However, despite following the instructions to the letter, I ended up with warm milk rather than yoghurt after eight hours. Any ideas where I might have gone wrong?

Tell us exactly what you did and exactly what you used, and we may be able to help

Penny. x

Magentasue

The first batch often seems to be runny - however warm milk sounds worse than runny. What temp did the milk start at - could it have been too hot?

Hawthorn

You guys obviously make yoghurt nowadays.....do you do it oldstylee, or do you have a proper 'yoghurt maker'? It's years since I did it, and it didn't last long.

skintmostofthetime

I found that using any plain yog from Mr T's or any where for that matter usually works.
As Penelope Penguin says What exactly did you do ??