Butter help?

[Guest guest]

Hello Everyone,

We have unexpectedly come across a rather large (100 gallon)

butter churn at an unbeatable price, so we've been making raw

butter for a few weeks now. Since it didn't come with any

directions, and we had never made butter in such a large quantity

before, we're have some problems. I was hoping someone here

could lend some advice?

We milk about 75 Holsteins, (we're organic and graze) and it

takes an entire milking worth of milk to separate into 50 gallons

of cream. So far we have found that by letting the cream cool to

around 75-80 degrees, and then churning for about 50-60 minutes,

we end up with a wonderful butter consistency. But, we are

having one heck of a time getting all the buttermilk rinsed out

of the butter. Now this makes about 50 pounds of butter, so

washing it is quite tedious, and takes a long time.

Would anyone have some suggestions for washing the butter so

we can get all the buttermilk out? Right now we have a special

sink set up (thoroughly clean of course) that we put about 5

pounds of butter at a time. Fill the sink with cold water,

squish through our fingers, drain the water, refill the sink and

continue doing this over and over again. We have some butter

that refuses to rinse clean after 15-20 rinses in this way. I

have made smaller batches of butter that rinse clean in just a

few rinses, so I'm thinking it may have something to do with the

churn time? Is it possible we're churning too long?

Also, we have never tried making sour cream butter. Mostly

because of the amount of cream we use, and we have never done it

before. Would anyone have suggestions on how we could attempt

this with our large amount of cream?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Janet Brunner

wajabrun@...