need help: whey for yogurt inoculation?

[Guest guest]

I don't know what happened to my last yogurt making attempt. Is is necessary to

heat the milk to 160 or 180 degrees and then let it cool? I just heated to about

130 and then cooled to about 113. But this batch of yogurt was really runny. The

last batch I did came out beautifully thick. I used the same organic whole milk.

But I also used the same commercial starter instead of my home made yogurt as a

starter, because I'd dripped the last of it and only had the 'cheese' and whey.

And now I think I'm having bloating from eating a small quantity of this very

soft yogurt. Could it be that my starter was not fresh and therefore strong

enough (from maybe 2 week old commercial yogurt) to actually convert all of the

lactase in this milk in the 24 hour time period?

I can't think what else I may be reacting to.

Can anyone tell me if whey from my successful batch of yogurt, that is about 6

days old, can be used to successfully inoculate milk to make a new batch of

yogurt? would that be preferable to using my runny yogurt as a starter, or

should I go get some more commercial yogurt to start a new yogurt batch with?

Thanks for any thoughts.

harmony in trouble