Clabber Culture
Clabber is basically the sourdough starter equivalent for cheesemaking. It is a raw milk starter culture that you keep on your counter and much like a sourdough starter, you discard some off and feed it new milk each day to keep it healthy.
Ingredients
- 1 pint raw milk It MUST be raw unpasteurized milk
Instructions
- Fill a clean pint jar with fresh raw milk (bonus points if it is still warm from the udder). Cover the jar with a loose lid, I like to use a coffee filter with an elastic band. Set your clabber culture on the counter until it coagulates. Depending on how warm your house is, this first ferment will usually take about 2-3 days.
- After a few days of sitting on the counter undisturbed, your clabber culture will resemble yogurt. Take 1 tbsp of the clabber and add it into a new clean pint jar. The remainder of the clabber culture can be discarded (see my post on using clabber discard) Fill the jar with fresh raw milk, mix the jar, cover with a loose lid, and leave on the counter to coagulate. This second coagulation will happen a lot quicker, in fact you may see coagulation in as little as 12-24 hours.
- Once you see coagulation, take a tbsp of the clabber, add it to a clean pint jar, mix in fresh raw milk, cover with a loose lid and again let it ferment until it coagulates. (12-24 hours)
- Once you have repeated this cycle of feed, ferment, discard, feed, ferment, discard, several times, you are ready to use your clabber culture as a starter culture for cheesemaking at a ratio of 1 part clabber to 50 parts milk. Use your clabber as a starter culture for cheesemaking when it is coagulated, but has not yet started to separate or form bubbles.