More Cheese! And Some Soap!

We are taking care of a friend's farm while they are out of town for 10 days. They live about 25 minutes south of us. They are a great family and have taught Vet2Be alot about goats. The mom is Vet2Be's 4-H leader. They raise Nubians and we milk 3 each morning and evening. They also have some steer that they are raising for beef, chickens, and some horses.

Nubians can be very 'opinionated'. I guess you could also call them stubborn. Two of the ones that we milk can be a bit difficult on the stand. They are fast to milk, though, because they have larger orifaces than our goats do and they don't give quite as much milk.

The great thing about Nubian milk is the high butterfat content. Saanen milk doesn't make mozzarella because the butterfat content is about 2%, Nubian milk is about 4%, just like the whole milk in the store.

So today I made two batches of 30 Minute Mozzarella. Both batches were wonderful! They are in the fridge waiting for our 4th of July Picnic tomorrow. If you are interested in making mozzarella from goat milk, make sure you add extra citric acid. For some reason goat milk needs to be a bit more acidic to make good mozzarella.

I also decided to make some Feta. I haven't made any since last year but we have plenty of milk right now. Hopefully it will turn out tasty for tomorrow, too!

I also tried another batch of goat milk soap today. The first batch I made last week didn't turn out at all. I think the lye was too old. The batch I made earlier this week had some weird spots in it. They weren't lye, but I'm not sure what they were. I tried to remelt the batch and put it in different molds but this recipe does not melt well. I'm sure the soap will be fine to use, it just doesn't look pretty!

Today's batch looks nice so far. We'll see how it turns out when I take it out of the mold tomorrow. It is in the refrigerator for a few hours. When you use milk in a soap recipe it tends to super-heat and turn the soap into a gel. That really isn't a problem, but the heat tends to carmelize the milk and turn the soap a golden color instead of a lighter yellow color.