How to Make Yogurt (The Easy Way)

Most of us buy yogurt in those little plastic cups and have no idea how to make yogurt. It must be complicated, right?

The Easy Way to Make Yogurt

Recently I received a complimentary yogurt making kit from Probiotic Maker in exchange for my review.

It turns out that making great yogurt is very easy. The folks at Probiotic Maker send you everything you need.

The kit contains an automatic temperature control sleeve that fits over a gallon or half gallon of milk and automatically maintains the correct temperature to make yogurt.

The kit also came with six yogurt starter packs. While the automatic temperature control sleeve takes the guess work out of making yogurt, the real magic is in the starter packs.

All yogurt needs a culture to turn milk into yogurt or kefir. Most commercial yogurts and kefirs have one or two strains of ProBiotic bacteria.

The starter packs from Probiotic Maker contain eleven strains of probiotic bacteria:

• Lactobacillus acidophilus
• Lactobacillus rhamnosus
• Bifidobacterium lactis
• Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus
• Lactobacillus casei
• Streptococcus thermophilus
• Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris
• Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis
• Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis
• Leuconostoc mesenteroides ssp. cremoris
• Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis

This list contains bacteria that thrive in medium heat (mesophilic) and bacteria that thrive in higher heat (hermaphilic).

The automatic temperature control sleeve maintains the milk at a constant 98.6° F to maximize growth of all eleven strains.

This gives you the best of yogurt and kefir. Commercial products give you one or two stains of either mesophilic or hermaphilic bacteria, not a combination of eleven strains.

A wider variety of probiotics provides greater health benefits.

I’ve mentioned kefir a few times. If you are not familiar, it is a drinkable form of yogurt with different cultures (mesophilic) than those found in yogurt (hermaphilic). You should be able to find kefir in the milk cooler at your store.

I’ve only seen flavored kefir. It’s a great drink for breakfast or to make smoothies. But it costs more than milk and comes pre-sweetened.

When you make your own yogurt or kefir, you control all of the ingredients.

How to Make Yogurt at Home

The instructions are very simple.

Start with a fresh gallon of milk

Add a complete starter pack

Replace the cap and shake to mix in the starter culture
Slip on the automatic temperature control sleeve, plug it in

And leave it alone!

The automatic temperature control sleeve maintains the temperature for you. You don’t have to worry about it over heating and killing your cultures. And you don’t have to worry about it not getting warm enough to get the cultures to grow.

Leave it alone for eight or nine hours and let nature take it’s course.

My test and review

I used gallons of 2% milk to make two batches of yogurt.

It really was as easy as I described above. The toughest part was starting it at the right time of day.

It takes at least eight hours to make. I made one batch over night and another on a Saturday afternoon.

The longer you let it process the thicker the yogurt. Ten hours is about as long as you want to let it set.

When using gallon jugs to make yogurt you don’t want a thick yogurt or you’d have to cut the top off to get the yogurt out.

Also as the bacteria consume all of the sugar in the milk they will die off. To get the probiotic benefits of yogurt you want live and active cultures.

The other thing to remember is not to shake the milk. Leave it alone while the bacteria do their job. Then carefully place the jug in the fridge to cool.

If you use fat free milk you will get a layer of whey at the top of the jug.

Here is a video to explain the process and learn more about Probiotics.

My batches of Yogurt

I let the first batch sit for about eight hours. Since I used 2% milk I didn’t have any whey to pour off.

I removed the automatic temperature control sleeve and placed the jug in the fridge for a few hours.

After just eight hours the yogurt was pretty thick and chugged out of the bottle.

That first taste of pure, fresh yogurt was a little tart.

I took a pint glass, added some vanilla extract and a teaspoon of sugar and mixed it up. That was really good!

I let my second batch go for nine hours. The directions say it should be more sour the longer you let it set, but my second batch seemed less tart.

The thickness was about the same as the eight hour batch. I need to try a ten hour batch this weekend.

I found that a pint of yogurt with a little vanilla and teaspoon of sugar made a great desert or breakfast drink.

One Sunday after a long run I made a smoothie with a banana, chia seeds and vanilla. It was filling and very satisfying.

Good for you and the Environment

A gallon of yogurt is the equivalent of 32 cups of yogurt. It seems that the average price for a yogurt at the grocery store is $1.00 with many well above that.

A gallon of milk costs about $3.00 right now and you get a package of six starter packs for $19.00 or about $3.15 each. Call it $7.00 even for everything.

That is the equivalent of paying less than 22 cents per cup of yogurt! A 75% savings over commercial yogurt.

Not only are you saving money but you control how much sugar goes into your yogurt and there are no preservatives.

Instead of throwing away 32 yogurt cups and tops, you have one recyclable milk jug.

Quite often milk is sourced fairly local while yogurt may be shipped from half-way across the country.

Most other yogurt makers look like a crock pot. One more item to have on your counter or stuffed into the closet or draw.

The Probiotic Maker is easy to store and wipes clean.

If you made it this far, I have a discount code for you. Use this link to ProbioticMaker and use discount code OMNIRUNNER1 to get a 50% discount on a Probiotic Maker kit!

This offer is limited to the first three people to place their order. You don’t get a 50% discount very often so they have to place limits.

The kit comes with the automatic temperature control sleeve and two starter packs. Additional packages of six starters are $19.00.

Let me know what you think after you make your first batch at info at omnirunning.com.

Run well my Friends!

Andy