Raw milk > butter & yogurt

We have been blessed to have too much milk lately! We are also getting our milk from a Jersey instead of the Holstein.
Milk from Jersey's has so, so much cream! Too much cream to just shake back into the milk.
That means butter making.
Too much milk to drink means more yogurt and cheese.
The easiest thing to do is make butter from the cream and use the rest of the milk for yogurt.

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 Look at all that rich cream!!

Notice the distinct separation of the cream and the milk.

First, skim off as much cream as you can.

Don't worry, you can't get it all so don't stress about it.

Next, pour that cream into a food processor fitted with the blade.

Then just turn it on and watch!! First it will look like whipped cream and then all at once, you will have little curds of butter floating in watery milk. That watery milk is real buttermilk.

After a good 7 minutes depending on the wattage of your processor, you should have curdle-y butter.

Carefully, pour off the buttermilk and save it for baking. It can be used in place of liquid in most recipes and will make rolls or cakes very tender!

After the buttermilk is poured off, you need to "rinse" the butter. Run the cold water until it is very cold. You are literally going to rinse the butter. Put the container of butter under the running water and rinse gently. Fill the container about 1/2 way full of cold water and whiz a couple of times in the food processor. Don't be too rough!

Note: don't add this water to your buttermilk. Only the first draining is true buttermilk.

Do this several times until the water stays clear after "whizzing."

Now, gently squeeze the butter together with your hands. This is actually quite fun!! If you are extremely hot blooded, you may want to do this with cold water in the bowl so you don't melt your butter!
This is also the time to work in a little sea salt if you are wanting salted butter.
If you want to make flavored butter, by all means do it! I have added honey for a sweet spread, garlic and herbs for a garlic butter, fresh parsley for baked potatoes, really your imagination is your limit.

approximately 1/2 # of butter and a little less than 2 cups of buttermilk from the cream off of 1 gallon of fresh, raw milk

We use our butter fast enough that I don't need to preserve it. You could however, freeze your butter.

Next post will be a super simple yogurt making tutorial, with the rest of this gallon of milk.