If you have a small farm and have only a few animals that give milk, you should know that it’s really very simple to make delicious organic products at your farm. You’ll need only to know some important things that you can easily find in our blog or on other websites. Today we will talk about the production of sour cream at a small farm.

To make a sour cream at small farm you’ll need to have the following two components: a cream and a starter.

Let’s first talk about cream. In order to make cream, you’ll need a whole milk (not a pasteurized one). If you have a small farm, I guess there is a big chance you have it ☺

Now you need to get cream. In general, there are two ways to get cream:

1. Let milk stand for some time and collect cream from above.

Pros:
• ou save money, because except for the milk and jar you don’t need anything at all.

Cons:
• At least 12 hours is needed to let the cream float to the surface. During this time, milk can be wasted;
• The cream output will be less than it could be.

2. You can make cream using cream separator.

Pros:
• You can make cream in a few minutes.
• The cream output will be maximal.

Cons:
• The separator costs extra money. The price depends on the capacity and quality.

Read article How to choose cream separator to learn more.

Once you got a cream, the next step is to choose a starter. And there are two options I would suggest:

Buttermilk. Do not be confused by this word. In fact, it’s a mix of milk with vinegar or lemon juice. This recipe is very easy indeed, but it takes some time (about 24 hours).
To learn more, read make sour cream using buttermilk.

Dairy culture. In other words, a frozen bifidobacteria that will wake up and start to make a sour cream once you will add them to milk (cream). This method is more complicated than using buttermilk as a starter, but it has its advantages for sure. First, sour cream ripens faster (during 16 hours), and secondly, the amount of beneficial bacteria in this sour cream is the highest.

If you ask my opinion, then I will recommend you choose the second method, because it is more professional, useful and quick, but not the easiest one, at the same time.

As always, the choice is yours. And I really do hope that you enjoyed this article and it will be useful to you.

Have a great day and best wishes from all Milky Day team, the experts in small-scale milk processing.