Making Chèvre

Chèvre is French for "goat."  Bunny, one of our Nubian goats is in milk now.  We milk her twice a day - once at 6 am and another time at around 5 pm and get almost two quarts.  Here is Bunny all cleaned up in her stanchion.  It holds her head firmly in place while she eats and we milk.  While cows have four teats, goats only have two.  The milking goes very quickly.  Agnes is one of our other Nubian goats that is in milk, but her baby is strong and drinks every drop of her milk, so we don't have to milk her out.

For the past couple of decades, we've milked cows and goats through a muslin cloth filter placed over the bucket (for cows) and over a quart jar (for goats).  Tricia just purchased stainless steel funnels with a paper filter that fits in the bottom.  We find it works much better.  The muslin cloth filter is used day after day and had to be cleaned and disinfected, while the paper filters are disposable and a new one is used for each milking session.

Today we'll be making Chèvre cheese using a half gallon of Bunny's goat milk and a half packet of Chèvre starter.  Our starter was old, so we were unsure if it was going to work.  You'll find out at the end of the post if it works.  Here's the starter:

Here is the recipe that we're using.  Chèvre is a creamy, soft cheese similar to cream cheese.

Following the directions, we heat the milk to 86 degrees and add the starter and stir.

Then we cover the milk and let it sit at room temperature (not below 72 degrees) for 12 hours.  When we open the lid in 12 hours, we'll know if the starter was still active.

The proof is in the pudding - or curds, to change the saying up to fit.  We open the lid, tilt the pot and...  The cheese has set!  There are curds that have formed and the whey is on the bottom.  Remember Little Miss Muffet?  The nursery thyme says "She sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey."  I had to look up what a tuffet is.  It is a small foot stool.  Along came a spider that sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away...  Well, no footstools or spiders involved in our cheesemaking or eating adventure.

We pour the curds and whey into a cheesemaking strainer to separate them.  The whey flows to the bottom over time, leaving the curds in the basket.  We'll save the whey to use later in lacto-fermentation of vegetables.  Here are the curds in the basket, slowly draining the whey off.

You can add herbs or spices to this.  Tricia just eats it plain.  We also use it to make smoothies with by adding berries.  It came out really good!  It'll store in the fridge for about a week, but we've completely finished this batch already.  Perhaps in a post next week, we'll be making another type of soft goat cheese.  Bunny, unfortunately, lost both of her babies.  One was stillborn and the other was so weak that she died after about a week.  Bunny is still in milk and making lots of milk, so we'll continue milking her and making cheese.  We're also going to attempt to make goat milk cajeta.  Cajeta is a goat milk caramel.  Can't wait to make that.  

Making Chevre

Chevre is cheese made from goat's milk.  Our Nubian goat, Annie, provides the milk.  Tricia normally milks Annie.  She is temperamental, stubborn, and hard-headed.  (Of course, I am talking about Annie the goat.)

In her goat stanchion, we feed Annie a little dairy ration to distract her while Tricia quickly milks her.

We milk through a rag filter to keep hair, dust, bugs, or hay from falling in the milk.

Tricia added a chevre culture she got from Cultures for Health to the milk after warming the milk to 86 degrees and then covered and let it sit for 12 hours. 

Starter packet & Instructions

As you can see, the whey has separated from the curds.

We poured off the whey into a jar, leaving mostly the curds.

Then we spooned the chevre into a colander lined with muslin cloth.

We hung the chevre and let it drain for 7-12 hours.

In the morning the bag was opened and all of the liquid had drained off, leaving chevre!

Goat cream cheese.  Tricia normally spices it up by adding some herbs and we eat it with crackers.  Good stuff!

How to Make Chèvre

Chèvre is a soft, delicious, creamy cheese made from goat milk.  It is great for crackers and dips.  It is very easy to make.  First, you need a goat!  Annie, our Nubian goat will provide the goat milk to make our chèvre.  I coax her up onto her milking stanchion and when she puts her head in the squeeze, I lock her in.  She'll get to eat some dairy ration while I milk her in a minute.

A couple of things to note in the picture below.  First, I hobble her left rear leg so that she is not quite as mobile.  Otherwise, she begins stomping her feet.  She's really not a good milker, but we still put up with her stomping foolishness and milk her once a day.  Her momma, Nellie, was a very good milker.  You can see that her teats are full of milk. Time to get started.

We use a quart sized mason jar with a muslin cloth rag fastened over the opening with a rubber band that serves as a filter to keep out hay and goat hair.  We wash her teats with a washcloth and then we simply milk her.

Milking a goat doesn't take long.  In no time flat, I have almost a quart of fresh goat milk. It is warm.  The photo below looks odd as it looks like there is a bird sitting on the edge of the jar about to drink some of the goat milk, but it really isn't.  That is a chicken in the background sitting on the barn gate.

We bring the goat milk inside and put it in the fridge.  Now in order to make chèvre, you have to use a culture.  We get ours from culturesforhealth.com.  It comes with instructions below and packets of chèvre starter.

We used a half gallon of goat milk and heated it to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.  Do this very slowly and then remove from the heat.  Add 1 packet of chèvre starter and mix it up.  Then cover with a lid and let it culture in a warm place for 12 hours. Once 12 hours have passed, the culture is set.  You can see the whey has separated from the curds.

We place the curds in a muslin cloth and let the whey drip out of the cheese.  We pull the edges of the cloth up to make a bag and let the whey drip through the cloth into a jar for 12 hours.

After 12 hours your cheese looks like this:

Here is the whey that we captured in jars below.  We'll save this whey for future use.  Lots of times we will pour it in a dish for the chickens.  They love it.

We chopped up some parsley and some dried dill that we had in the herb pantry and added to the chèvre.

You can roll it into a ball, place in a bowl and drizzle some good extra virgin olive oil over it.

It is snack time!  Perfect for dipping with a cracker.

For the second ball, we rolled the herbed chèvre in chopped pecans.

Chèvre is a delicious cheese that is very easy to make.  We will continue to make and consume this cheese.