Homemade Yogurt from Raw Milk

My apologies for the recent lack of posts.  I was in NYC for research-related things, then in Sydney, Australia for a couple weeks for more research, then I went on vacation with my family in NC, and then I attended 3 weddings in 7 days.  Needless to say, I've been quite busy, but I will try to get back on track.
  
Ever since buying raw milk, we have been researching about using it to make other products, such as butter, yogurt, and whey.  We eat yogurt basically every day for breakfast, with almonds (my favorite are the Emerald cocoa roast almonds) and other nuts and berries, but we never really thought about making our own.  When we visited Scheffler Farm to buy our first gallon of raw milk, Eileen urged us to try making our own yogurt, claiming it was ridiculously easy.  She referred us to Get Foodie! (http://getfoodieshow.com/) and told us to watch Episode 11 to learn. 

To make yogurt, all you need is to warm up some milk, then cool it a bit, add a tad of yogurt to start the culture growing, and keep it warm for an extended period of time.  Since we already had the milk, next we had to choose our yogurt.  It’s depressing to me to see first-hand how afraid America is of fat, especially nutritional, satiating fat found in whole milk and yogurt.  Most of the yogurts we could find in the store were 0% fat, low-fat, fat-free... it was difficult to find any made from whole milk.  In addition, we couldn’t find organic, plain, Greek yogurt that wasn’t 0% fat.  Considering that many of the nutritional benefits from milk are contained in the fat portions (1), this boggles my mind.

Anyway, the idea of creating our own yogurt from raw milk was extremely appealing.  Turns out, the actual process is also extremely easy.

Supplies:
- 1 qt raw milk
- thermometer (must measure 100F-180F range at least)
- quart-sized mason jar
- 2 Tbsp already made yogurt (we used organic greek yogurt)
- large bowl that will fit mason jar
- water
- oven

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 250F
2. Pour milk in pan on stove
3. Heat to 180F, stirring constantly, then remove from heat and cool to 110F
4. Pour into mason jar
5. Add yogurt and stir
6. Fill bowl with warm/hot water
7. Seal mason jar and place in bowl with water
8. Put in oven
9. Turn off oven
10. Wait 8-18 hr

Here is us heating the yogurt:

Here is the jar in the bowl with water:

It turned out fantastic!  Its consistency was on the thin side, but it tasted delicious.  We might try letting it sit longer in the warmed oven next time.  Also, we are going to use this yogurt as the base for the next batch, so the results might turn out even better.

The best part about this?  A quart of organic, whole milk yogurt from Stonyfield is around $3.50, which comes out to $14.00 per gallon.  This yogurt was produced from raw milk, at $6.00 per gallon.  Not too shabby.