How to Make Goat's Milk Butter

In this post, I show step-by-step how to make butter from goat's milk. There are a few extra steps and some extra goat-specific equipment that will make the job much easier!

The difference between goat milk and cow milk

Goats are wonderful dairy animals for a small homestead. They're smaller, eat less, and are easier logistically (in my opinion) to get pregnant. Goat bucks are much easier and safer to keep than dairy bulls. Goats also produce a manageable amount of milk for a medium-sized family.

However, one of the main reasons I wanted our own source of dairy is to make cream and butter on our farm. Making butter from goat milk is a little trickier than from cow's milk. That is because goat's milk is naturally homogenized.

What does homogenized mean?

Cows milk is not naturally homogenized. This means that if fresh cow's milk is left to sit still, the fat molecules will rise to the top and float. You will get a cream layer at the top of the milk and skim milk below. In cow's milk, it is easy to skim this cream off the top and use it to make any dairy product that required cream. Especially butter. When you buy milk at the store it has been homogenized. This means that the milk has been put through a high-pressure system to break the fat molecules apart into smaller particles. These particles mix more evenly throughout the milk. This is why store-bought milk does not form a cream layer.

Goat milk is naturally homogenized. The fat molecules are already small enough that they stay mixed throughout the milk. If goat milk is left to sit, it will eventually form a cream layer, but it takes a lot longer for those particles to rise and collect than it would in cow's milk.

The skimming method

With fresh cow's milk, you can simply wait for the cream to separate from the milk in the fridge (typically overnight) and then skim all the cream off the top. If you use the skimming method with goat's milk, you won't get nearly as much per gallon, and will probably have to collect for multiple days to get enough to do anything with.

When we first got Esther our alpine (our first goat in milk), it took us a while to get our milking routine down. Once we felt comfortable with the cleaning, sterilizing, straining, and storing...I decided that I would get serious about butter making. 

I was able to make a very small amount of butter by skimming the top of the milk after it set (which took days). I was just sort of experimenting, and I shook the skimmed cream in a mason jar and got about 1 Tbsp. of butter. All that work and I could barely butter my morning toast! We kept at it over the next few weeks, but we just weren't impressed with the results.

There are a few reasons that I don't like the skimming method.

1. I don't like how long the milk has to sit undisturbed. We drink/use almost all the milk that Esther provides. So when collecting cream it ties up the milk until the cream is skimmed. Then I feel like the milk is 3-4 days old before we can even start using it.
2. It's awkward. We store our milk in sanitized half-gallon mason jars. I can't get the spoon down inside them with enough room to carefully skim the cream without mixing it all up again. I tried pouring it into a flat cake pan to allow more surface area, but the pan took up a lot of room in the fridge and I didn't like the idea of the milk sitting in there absorbing the "refrigerator" smells and flavors.
3. It takes forever! Each day I would skim Esther's milk...and each day I would get like 3 Tbsp.

Overall, I just felt like we were playing around with the milk too much. It was being handled a lot and poured into different containers and in the end, I felt like it was just kind of gross. In the end, I just felt frustrated with the whole ordeal. We eat a lot of butter, and I didn't see this fitting into my daily routine.

What is a cream separator?

A cream separator is a machine that uses centrifugal force to whip the fat molecules away from the milk, thus separating the cream from the skimmed milk.

We bought our cream separator in 2010. This was before Homesteading (in the modern sense) had really taken off as it has now. The only cream separators we could find were either antique and no longer worked or professional models that ranged in the $1000.

I finally found an inexpensive model from Ukraine for about $75. The instructions were all in Ukrainian and it took a lot of trial and error to understand this machine.

Luckily, as raising dairy goats is gaining popularity, I now see that there are several cream separators available on Amazon in the $200 range. Some are hand cranks and some are electric which frees up a set of hands.

I will write a future post talking about assembling our cream separator.

How to make goat's milk butter

1. Wash, sterilize and set up all equipment. You will need 2 large bowls for collection under the spouts of the cream separator.
2. Warm the milk to 90 degrees in a double boiler system. We use our stock pot inside our canning pot. Fill with water so the stock pot is floating slightly.
3. Pour the warmed goat milk into the hopper on the cream separator. Our's will hold 2 gallons. Then begin cranking and when it gets up to speed you take out the stopper to let the milk run through the centrifuge and the cream and milk begin to separate.

2. Once we had our cream we poured it into a large mason jar and shook it.

The granules formed surprisingly fast, (about 10 minutes).

3. In the same jar, I ran ice-cold water and rinsed the butter until the liquid ran clear. Then I pressed it to get most of the water out and salted it.

4. Then I pressed it into our goat butter mold and placed it in the fridge overnight to firm. It's so beautifully white and delicious. Carotene is what makes butter yellow, but goats absorb all the carotene they ingest so it doesn't appear in the cream.

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