The Great Yogurt Experiment
Ever since I learned about fermenting in the Pickl-It jar this past spring I have been using it to make various fermented foods like Water Kefir and Sauerkraut. One food that I resisted making in the Pickl-It was yogurt. A big part of why is because I make a lot of yogurt! I make 2-3 gallons every 2 weeks when I get my milk. That is a lot of Pickl-It jars. Also the biggest Pickl-It jar that I can fit in my dehydrator (where I make my yogurt) is a 2L jar. So that means 6 Pickl-It jars just for my yogurt! That is a big investment! (I know I could make less at one time and use fewer jars but I do like getting it all done at once and I can only get my milk every 2 weeks anyhow). HOWEVER, I am doing GAPS to heal our guts and I hate to think that I am wasting my time and not getting optimal benefits from this food if simply changing my jar could make a difference.
So, I began to using Fido jars to make yogurt. I was convinced that air exposure may effect probiotic counts in yogurt but wasn’t convinced that an air lock was necessary. The first time I just did one Fido jar and the rest mason jars. My husband eats the bulk of the yogurt that I make and when I asked him about it he said it tasted “different”. When pressed he said that he liked his mason jar yogurt better because it was milder. Hmmmm….. He also said that the Fido Jar yogurt had an off taste. I believe he mentioned sewage but said he could get used to it if he needed to. So I tasted them both. The Fido Jar yogurt was certainly more sour but I couldn’t taste the off taste at all. My husband can have issues with change so I put his objections down to his “change bad” attitude at times.
BUT…. I really did want him to like his yogurt and to make the best yogurt possible for my family. So I made more yogurt. Most of it in Fido Jars and one mason jar of yogurt. We all taste tested it the first day that it was ready. Fido and Mason jar yogurts tasted the same. Then we taste tested it after a week. Fido yogurt was still just as sour as freshly fermented and the mason jar yogurt was much milder. Hmmm… After 2 weeks the difference was even more distinct. Then my kids said that the fido jar yogurt had a “bad taste”. I still couldn’t taste that bad taste or smell it but if 3 out of 4 of us tasted it then there must be something to this “off taste”. The girls even expressed in their own ways that it reminded them of sewage. Ewww!!! Amazingly I managed to get everyone to do the taste test out of hearing of each other. (I’m sure your children never copy each other, but mine have been known to do that so I wanted truly honest feed back). I also did a test using an air lock on one jar and not on another jar but I replaced the air lock with a plug’r when I put the jar in the fridge. (Did you follow all of that?) That time all 3 jars tasted different but the two air tight jars had that sewage taste. Ugh!
So now I need to test it all out and you get to come along for the ride. I am going to test 4 kinds of jars. I’m using my smallest versions of each jar so that it won’t tie up too much of my precious raw milk.
- A Mason jar with a typical metal canning lid.
- A Fido jar.
- A Pickl-It jar that I will then replace the air lock with a plug’r when I move it to the fridge.
- A Pickl-It jar that I will leave the air lock on the whole time.
Since I have determined in the past that immediately after making the yogurt it tastes the same in every kind of jar I will not do a taste test at day 1. We are trying to determine if there is a difference in the yogurt using an air tight lid or not and if the air lock is necessary the whole time.
I plan to taste at 1 week and again at 2 weeks. I will open the jars and remove a sample for us to taste and then close them back up quickly. Elaine Gottschall said that after 2 weeks yogurt cultures are pretty much gone (and can’t be used to start another batch of yogurt reference here). I do not know if keeping the yogurt in an airtight jar will extend this time. That is perhaps an extension of this experiment. We’ll see what happens when I hit 2 weeks. 
So here we go!
These are the yogurt jars in the dehydrator. It is a trick of the light that makes the one on the far right look a different color from the rest. They are all the same milk.
- I used milk from one jar from my farmer for all of these jars so that won’t be a variable.
- I mixed the powdered starter (I use custom Probiotics Yogurt Starter #2) into the milk before pouring it into the jars so they will each have the same dose of starter.
- I put them all into my dehydrator at the same time for 24 hours set at 100 degrees
- At the end of the incubation time I moved them to my ferment fridge where they will be kept at about 50 degrees for the duration of the experiment.
13 Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- The Great Yogurt Experiment after One Week. | Loving Our Guts - [...] Cooking with Coconut Flour Primer » The Great Yogurt Experiment after One Week. If you're new here, …
- Fermentation Friday: Probiotic Pills vs Fermented Food « Pickle Me Too - [...] This is how I make my sauerkraut now. She is also doing this interesting yogurt experiment: The Great Yogurt …
- The Great Yogurt Experiment Conclusion | Loving Our Guts - [...] The Great Yogurt Experiment [...]
- GAPS Basics: How to make GAPS yogurt | Loving Our Guts - [...] The Great Yogurt Experiment [...]
- GAPS Basics: Sour Cream | Loving Our Guts - [...] The Great Yogurt Experiment [...]
Leave a Comment
Follow Me
Advertisements
E-Mail updates of New Blog Posts
Archives
Books I Recommend
Looking forward to this journey! I am surprised by a 24-hour fermentation time for yogurt. Every yogurt culture I have used specified a 4-6 hour incubation period, and I have used several different ones. What is the taste like in your 24-hour yogurt? Is it tangier than most?
For those following GAPS or SCD yogurt must be fermented for 24-29 hours to eliminate the lactose. This is longer than it is typically fermented for and it will result in a much tarter yogurt because the sugar (lactose) is all eaten. Any yogurt starter can be used for a 24 hour ferment.
Hi Patty,
Thanks so much for posting this! I am trying to figure out what size pickl-it jars to purchase and from the measurements on the pickl-it website i thought i was going to need to buy 1 liter for fermenting my yogurt & sour cream. I have an excalibur dehydrator (9 tray) so i was glad to hear you fit a 2 liter in there with the air lock on. I was on SCD from 2008 - June, 2011 which i started the GAPS diet June, 2011. I have needed many “cherries on top” also and may need more but i’m finally starting to heal more in the last 2 months after dental surgery (infected tooth pulled & 6 cavitations cleaned) by a Huggins trained dentist. I’m so amazed at the progress i’ve made since then but i still have some constipation and was so happy to hear how the anaerobic fermentation helped your daughter! I’m keeping my fingers crossed it’ll help me as well! I love your blog and have learned so much from it….thanks for sharing your wonderful knowledge!
Just to be clear I am using a mini-airlock on a 2 L in the dehydrator. A 1.5L is the same height and would also work but the 3L is just a bit too big and won’t fit. (I just tried it to be sure.)
I am glad to hear that dealing with cavitations helped you too! Do you have any amalgams? I think that will be what I tackle in 2013.
Thanks Patty! I had 2 amalgams removed Jan 2011 because the largest amalgam had cracked my tooth (this is the tooth i recently had extracted) but we were in the middle of moving so i didn’t research enough and he didn’t remove them properly i don’t think. There’s a healthy mouth summit Nov 11 thru 18 and it’s free and on-line. You can go to OraWellness.com and click on the link to the right to register. They’ll send you a “smoking teeth” video to watch too that’s very informative. Dr. Huggins and my dentist as well as many others are speaking. I’m looking forward to it!
I meant to also say he didn’t test each amalgam with the electrical current device to see which one is positive and which one is negative. If i remember correctly they’re supposed to move the positive charged first. I didn’t know to ask for the testing so they didn’t do it (if they offer it they can run the risk of losing their license). I started GAPS about 3 months after and thought me feeling bad was die off but it may have been from the improper amalgam removal plus the material in the crowns he put in show highly reactive on my bio-compatibility test. I’m working with Dr. Huggins to balance my body chemistry so i think i’m on the right track now.
Thank you for this! I saw my dentist today. It was my first time back to him since my cavitation surgery. He had no idea how much it had helped me. He actually hugged me he was so happy for me.
Anyhow I asked him to test my teeth again since I had 2 amalgams removed at one point because of decay under one. The remaining ones tested pretty much the same with one of them being really bad, so that is on deck for January for me. I’m going to register for that healthy mouth summit! I want to be prepared for January. Thank you for sharing it.
You’re very welcome! That’s good you had him test them again. Sounds like you have a wonderful and caring dentist. That is so great you’ve felt so much better after your cavitations surgery! I’ll bet you’ll feel even better after you get the rest of your amalgams out. I just seen where you posted on your yogurt experiment….gotta go read it!
So have you the results?
Yes the other two posts are linked in this one.
Oh, I see them down in the comments now. Thanks!
Sherry,
I just went and looked and I apparently forgot to save the update I added with the links to the conclusion! I’m so sorry I didn’t double check before to be sure it was really there. Going to add that now. *blush*
No problem! I found them anyway. Thanks again!