How to Make Homemade Goat Milk Chevre with Kefir
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This recipe has been adapted from the book “Goats Produce Too! The Udder Real Thing” Volume II by Mary Jane Toth. If you are new to goats, I highly recommend you purchase this book. It can be found at Caprine Supply online. Her recipes are amazing and the understanding and information she provides for using goat milk is invaluable.
If you have just entered the world of dairy goats and have your own fresh goat’s milk, I’m telling you RIGHT MEOW, you need to make chevre. Especially if it’s your first time making cheese. Yeah, you’re going to hear from others to “make mozzarella it’s so gooooood” or “try feta, it’s so easy” to which I say, try chevre because it literally is easy and nearly impossible to mess up. Mozzarella is one of the hardest and most temperamental cheeses out there, even the quick way by cheating with citric acid. It’s the same song and dance as the canning crowd when they tell you to start canning with jam…. which is the most annoyingly hard thing to make for some people like me. So lisssennn to meeeeee.
Chevre has been the most versatile soft cheese in my kitchen, replacing things like cream cheese and ricotta cheese, and even sour cream. It’s the same cheese as those little logs of goat cheese at the store are, sans the hideous bucky flavor the store bought version has. Bleck. Last year I made at minimum one batch of chevre each week while my goats were in milk and only froze 2 pounds total. We eat a lot of it LOL. If you have trouble with your goats milk tasting off and having an acidic or weird flavor, check out my blog post on troubleshooting your milk here.
Cultures
This was the most confusing part of learning cheese and I got caught up in buying a big starter culture variety pack from a cheesemaking supply company because I didn’t understand what the cultures were and wasn’t confident in what I was doing. I have since learned a bit more and now know there’s basically a mesophilic culture and a thermophilic culture. Mesophilic bacteria like cooler temps and you’ll heat your milk up to around 80 degrees to culture it, whereas thermophiles loveeeee high temperatures and you’ll be heating milk up to the 180s. If you only have a yogurt culture on hand, make yogurt cheese by making yogurt and straining it for like 12 hours to make a thick cheese called labneh. Right now, this is circulating through the homesteader crowd as homemade cream cheese, which it’s not, but it works well and is about the same texture as chevre, it just takes higher heat and incubation and gives you a more sour end product as compared to the more mild chevre.
I now use my milk kefir to culture a cheese needing a mesophilic culture, like this chevre, and my yogurt culture for a thermophilic cheese. This allows me to keep the cultures going that I use anyway and use what I have on hand to make cheese as opposed to purchasing special cultures and storing them; I can use the freshest culture possible. When my goats are in milk, I drink at minimum 2 cups of milk kefir every single day. This fermented probiotic beverage is high in protein and gut healthy goodness that leave me feeling vibrant all day long. I miss it when I don’t have a continuous supply of milk to use. I will soon have milk kefir grains available in my online farm store once I get that up and running to help you get your own cheese cultures going! And my kids are yogurt hounds, so it isn’t hard to keep a continuous supply of each of these cultures as I need them. These are considered traditional cultures, meaning they need to be cultured before you use them… obviously. I keep 2 pints of milk kefir on my counter at all times, because around the 2 day mark of culturing is the best for me and is the perfect strength for cheesemaking. Yogurt is the same… you want a live culture.. which if you have your fresh yogurt, you have a live culture!
Some homesteaders use clabber as an all encompassing culture for many cheese, including hard cheese. I haven’t been able to clabber goat milk without it getting a bit musky, so I haven’t been successful at this and that’s why I use kefir grains instead. It preserves the milk better without letting the amino acids in the milk take over (which goat milk is notoriously high in versus other species). Clabber does work well though, and if you have a cow, you’ll probably have more luck with that. Me? I’m perfectly happy with the flavor and benefits of kefir and it’s really no more work than continuously feeding and back slopping a clabber culture. Choose your hard.
If you don’t have the live cultures like me, I would recommend investing in DVI cultures, which means direct vat inoculant. This means these cultures can be added directly to the warm milk, depending on temp for mesophiles versus thermophiles, and don’t require culturing ahead of time. You can buy them in bulk containers and have plenty on hand. For most 2 gallon cheese batches, you’ll use 1/8 of a teaspoon of culture, so a little goes a long way. Store your cultures in the freezer!
Rennet
If you’re alive, you’ll know that rennet information has been circulating amongst the homesteader niche that Pfizer owns most of the rennet used in commercial production cheesemaking that is basically a fake version of calf rennet… which is why your cheese ingredients say “enzymes.” That is used to set the cheese commercially as it’s cheaper and probably quicker I assume. If we’re making our own cheese, it’s very likely part of the reason that we don’t want to be poisoned by big pharma with yet another food. That, and cheese feeds the brain, and homemade cheese tastes so much better. When choosing rennet, choose a calf rennet in liquid if possible, and do note the strength. Some companies sell 1.5x or even 2x or higher strength rennet without denoting that, and then you go to use it in recipes and your cheese is whack. If they don’t specify, message or email the company before purchasing. You can still use it, you’ll just have to adjust how much you add. I do use single strength and this recipe reflects that measurement. If you strength is higher, it’s just a matter of a simple ratio equation to figure out how much to add. Calf rennet seems to be the only “safe” one that isn’t tampered with, but I’m not entirely sure of that. I just do the best I can with what I have. And I don’t plan on harvesting our calves to get their stomach rennet, as they’re worth more to us as 2 year olds for beef.
There are also ways to make homemade rennet from “weeds” around you using plants such as thistle and nettle. I’ve been meaning to try that, but it does take a very large amount of the liquid to set a gallon of milk, but it would be fun to try since many of these rennet making weeds plague my homestead LOL. Maybe I’ll do that this spring when the milk and the thistle is plentiful and report back. Homemade rennet from plants would require a much different measurement than this recipe calls for, so be aware of that. I am specifically using liquid calf rennet I purchased in a dropper bottle, as a dropper makes it easier to dose in soft cheeses!
Recommended Books
I’m going to link my resource page here where you can find cheesemaking books I recommend and own personally. They’re amazing resources and have wonderful information to help you understand the fascinating science behind cheesemaking and preserving milk. Seriously amazing!
Now, let’s make some homemade goat cheese!
Equipment You Might Want:
- Stainless steel stock pot with a lid
- Thermometer
- Stainless steel spoon
- Cheese Cloth
- Greek Yogurt Strainer
- Air Tight Container
- Parchment Paper
​Ingredients:
- 4-5 quarts whole goat milk
- 1/2 cup cultured goat milk kefir (or 1/8 tsp DVI mesophilic culture)
- Diluted rennet
Step 1: Culture the Milk
Start by adding about 5 quarts of fresh raw milk to a clean, stainless steel stock pot with a lid. When using goat milk, make sure the milk has been properly chilled prior to making cheese so the acids in the milk have been slowed/stopped. Heat slowly over low heat with a thermometer until the milk reaches 80 degrees F. Stir frequently to ensure even heating. Be sure to not overheat.
Strain out 1/2 cup milk kefir and add to the milk. Mix very well.
Step 2: Set the Milk
Make your rennet dilution by measuring out 1/3 cup cool water and adding 3 drops of liquid calf rennet. Stir.
Measure out 2 tablespoons of the rennet dilution and add it to the milk.
Mix in using an up and down motion with your spoon. Don’t aggressively stir in rennet; I’ve learned that can introduce bubbles and can make your cheese weird. Not so much in soft cheeses, but more hard cheeses, but just start the habit now.
Step 3: Rest
Cover the pot and set aside in a warm-ish location (room temperature for me is about 70-76 degrees depending on the season and is perfect for chevre) and allow it to sit undisturbed for 12 hours out of direct sunlight. Â Sunlight can unalive those good bacteria you need to make your cheese. Â I normally will make chevre first thing in the morning if I’m going to drain it for 12 hours to make a thick cheese or will make it in the evening if I need to watch it more closely to keep it as a thinner cheese (think sour cream, ricotta).
​The chevre will sometimes be set up in about 6 hours but I err for a longer fermentation time just because I want the specific beneficial bacteria produced by kefir to be plentiful. I’m not sure if it helps or not, but it works for me, so that’s what I do :D
Step 4: Strain
​The cheese is ready when it is set and looks like a really thick yogurt. It may have a thin layer of whey (yellow liquid) around the edges and floating on top. That’s good and normal!
Spoon the cheese into your greek yogurt strainer (I use this and it works magnificently for chevre as well as yogurt, we love a multipurpose tool and I tell everyone to invest in one, it’s amazing is so much easier than wrestling with cheesecloth and figuring out where to hang it), and allow to drain until it is the thickness and texture you want. Drain anywhere from 6-8 hours.
I save the whey from chevre and use it to make bread and make whey-monade or homemade jello! You can also water your garden with it if you don’t want another thing to do something with :)
To Store:
Store in an air tight container in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks. I use chevre to replace ricotta in homemade lasagna and mix it with fresh herbs and garlic. You can also salt it and mix in a bit of honey and use it as cream cheese for homemade bagels. I also use chevre to make cheesecake and it is so rich and decadent. It shows you just how much crap is in store bought cream cheese. Anything that calls for a soft cheese, chevre works amazingly in! Plus, you have probiotic goodness in every bit that is feeding your gut, your immunity, and your health, all in a delicious cheese form.
Freeze in 8 ounce portion by shaping into a cheese log and rolling up in parchment and then placing them in freezer bags.
This recipe should yield around 1 11/2-2 pounds of chevre per batch.
Notes:
You can make this exact recipe with cow’s milk, it is just called bovre instead of chevre and the recipe doesn’t change.
This also works fine with pasteurized milk if you prefer that over consuming raw milk. Be sure to have calcium chloride on hand if you do, because pasteurized milk needs it added to it to set properly.
You can mix different flavors of fruit, herbs, salt, sugar, nuts, whatever in with your chevre and serve it on a cheese board or charcuterie board. It makes an amazing dip and snack. If you are going to freeze it though, freeze it plain and then flavor it after thawing when you’re ready to use for best flavor. A favorite is to mix fresh lemon juice and blueberries in with a little honey or maple syrup for a sweet treat and we dip pretzels in it.
​I hope you enjoy making fresh goat cheese!
Equipment
- Stainless steel stock pot with a lid
- Stainless steel spoon
- Cheese cloth
- Greek Yogurt Strainer
- Air Tight Container
- parchment paper
Ingredients
- 4-5 quarts whole goat milk
- 1/2 cup cultured goat milk kefir or 1/8 tsp DVI mesophilic culture
- 2 Tbs Diluted rennet 1/3 cup water + 3 drops liquid calf rennet
Instructions
- Start by adding about 5 quarts of fresh raw milk to a clean, stainless steel stock pot with a lid. When using goat milk, make sure the milk has been properly chilled prior to making cheese so the acids in the milk have been slowed/stopped. Heat slowly over low heat with a thermometer until the milk reaches 80 degrees F. Stir frequently to ensure even heating. Be sure to not overheat.
- Strain out 1/2 cup milk kefir and add to the milk. Mix very well.
- Make your rennet dilution by measuring out 1/3 cup cool water and adding 3 drops of liquid calf rennet. Stir.
- Measure out 2 tablespoons of the rennet dilution and add it to the milk.
- Mix in using an up and down motion with your spoon. Don’t aggressively stir in rennet; I’ve learned that can introduce bubbles and can make your cheese weird. Not so much in soft cheeses, but more hard cheeses, but just start the habit now.
- Cover the pot and set aside in a warm-ish location (room temperature for me is about 70-76 degrees depending on the season and is perfect for chevre) and allow it to sit undisturbed for 12 hours out of direct sunlight. Sunlight can unalive those good bacteria you need to make your cheese. I normally will make chevre first thing in the morning if I’m going to drain it for 12 hours to make a thick cheese or will make it in the evening if I need to watch it more closely to keep it as a thinner cheese (think sour cream, ricotta).
- The chevre will sometimes be set up in about 6 hours but I err for a longer fermentation time just because I want the specific beneficial bacteria produced by kefir to be plentiful. I’m not sure if it helps or not, but it works for me, so that’s what I do :D
- The cheese is ready when it is set and looks like a really thick yogurt. It may have a thin layer of whey (yellow liquid) around the edges and floating on top. That’s good and normal!
- Spoon the cheese into your greek yogurt strainer (I use this and it works magnificently for chevre as well as yogurt, we love a multipurpose tool and I tell everyone to invest in one, it’s amazing is so much easier than wrestling with cheesecloth and figuring out where to hang it), and allow to drain until it is the thickness and texture you want. Drain anywhere from 6-8 hours.
To Store:
- Store in an air tight container in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks. I use chevre to replace ricotta in homemade lasagna and mix it with fresh herbs and garlic. You can also salt it and mix in a bit of honey and use it as cream cheese for homemade bagels. I also use chevre to make cheesecake and it is so rich and decadent. It shows you just how much crap is in store bought cream cheese. Anything that calls for a soft cheese, chevre works amazingly in! Plus, you have probiotic goodness in every bit that is feeding your gut, your immunity, and your health, all in a delicious cheese form.
- Freeze in 8 ounce portion by shaping into a cheese log and rolling up in parchment and then placing them in freezer bags.
- This recipe should yield around 1 11/2-2 pounds of chevre per batch.
