Making homemade goat butter may seem impossible…
But, friend, I’m here to show you how it’s done.
Because I love you.
And because I love butter. Goat butter, that is.
Problem is, goat cream is complicated.
Goat’s milk is naturally homogenized. Meaning, the cream won’t rise to the top and separate like in cow’s milk. On one side, this is a good thing because it can make goat’s milk easier to digest. On the other side, when you have a plethora of goat’s milk and you’d like to make some goat butter, things get kinda tricky.
So, how do you separate the cream in goat’s milk?
The answer? Very carefully.
You have two options. You can either purchase a cream separator or you can use my method below. There are pros & cons to both methods and my best advice would be that unless you’re making gallons of butter, stick with the homemade cream separating method.
If you let your goat’s milk sit in the fridge for 3-7 days, you’ll get about a 1/2 inch of cream that has risen to the top. Take a spoon and scoop the cream off the top of the milk until you reach a more watery substance. Try to get as little of the watery milk as possible.
Once you have enough cream, you can start to make butter! I suggest skimming the cream off the top and placing the cream in a quart jar until you reach a quart of cream. You can store this quart jar in the freezer to maintain its freshness. This way, even if it takes you a month to get a quart of cream, your cream will stay fresh in the freezer.
How to make goat butter
After you have your goat cream, making goat butter is actually a pretty easy process! The cream will need to be mixed until the fatty solids separate from the buttermilk. After that, you’ll use ice water to make the butter more solid and squeeze out the rest of the buttermilk.
Ingredients
- 1 quart goat's milk cream
- salt (optional)
- bowl of ice water
Instructions
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Pour chilled goat's milk cream into a mixer.
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Mix on high for about 10-15 minutes. (At first it will look like whipped cream, then it will separate and look like little balls of butter - this is where the butter is separated from the milk)
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Once it forms larger balls of butter turn off the mixer and scoop out the butter.
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Place the butter into the bowl of ice water.
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Squeeze the butter until it forms a nice, hard ball. Keep squeezing until the it doesn't give out any more buttermilk.
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Take the ball of butter out of the ice water and into a new bowl. Salt to taste.
Recipe Notes
One quart of goat's milk cream should make 2 c. butter.
Do you need to pasteurize goat milk?
Hi Tammy-
No, you do not have to, but make sure you understand what raw milk is. https://cityfarmingbook.com/milking-dairy-goats/
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
Hi! Can I use previously frozen goat milk, thaw, then remove cream and make butter? Thank you!
Hi Mia-
Yes, you can.
Thanks! -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
I’m milking 3 goats and one is a first freshener. One milking a day and almost 1 1/2gallon a milking. Think thats pretty good. Bought a cream separator and I so love it!! Have been making butter every couple of days. At this rate I’ll have enough in the freezer to last a year! And I bought a Milkyday separator I bit of a pain at first but gets easier the more you use it. So I would say if your looking for one, well it’s great. Thanks for all your ideas for what to do with goat milk.
Have you ever used sheep’s milk for making butter? We will be raising Romanov sheep in the spring for meat but was wondering about any leftover milk we might acquire?
Hi Morgan-
Sheep’s milk can be made into yogurt, cheese, and butter. It’s a lot like goat’s milk and is naturally homogenized so the cream doesn’t separate as easily as cow’s milk does. However, 1 quart of cream will produce about 1 pound of butter.
The butterfat and protein content of sheep’s milk is higher than cow’s milk and the high protein content allows more cheese to be made from it than goat’s milk.
Good luck with your sheep!
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
How long does goat butter keep in refrigerator?
Hi Diana-
As long as you have squeezed the majority of the buttermilk out, it will last about 3 weeks. If buttermilk remains, then it can get sour in about a week. You can also freeze butter for at least 6 months (some say a year, but I haven’t tried it that long). Be sure to double wrap it in plastic and then foil to resist freezer burn.
I hope that helps.
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
My Danish grandmother and her husband owned and ran a dairy, so butter-making is a family heritage. My mother taught me to work the liquid out of the churned butter using the traditional wide wooden paddle in a large wooden bowl. My mom emphasized the need for removing as much as possible to prevent the butter from becoming rancid so my goal was to get out every drop. (I looooved butter and didn’t want any to be wasted–ever.) Am going to begin purchasing goat milk this week and will ‘think about’ storing up enough to make butter. HOWEVER, I’d like to know if one can make sour-cream butter as we preferred to with our cow milk butter. People turn up their nose when you mention allowing the cream to naturally sour in the refrigerator (or sping house, as we did when living off the grid in northern Michigqn), but the flavor is wonderful, not the least offputting.
Hello-
You can make both butter and sour cream from goats milk, so assume you can make sour cream butter, although I have not tried making it before. If you make it let us know how it turns out.
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
About how much goat milk does it take to get a quart of cream? Thanks!
Hi Kara-
The amount of cream you get really depends on your goat and where she is in her milking cycle. It also depends if you are using a separatator or not. A rough estimate would be about 1/2 to 1 quart of cream per gallon of milk. I hope that helps.
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
tried to make butter, i ended up with what looks like whip cream did i mix to long or not long enough
Hi Marilyn-
I’m guessing you did not mix it long enough because butter is basically over-whipped cream. If you do mix it longer and it still doesn’t form, try allowing your cream to warm to room temperature. Sometimes that can help. Best of luck! Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
I had the same results as Marilyn, mine started to look like butter at about 10 minutes in the blender – but then as it got warmer to room temperature it just turned into liquid again. I’m going to try putting it back in the fridge to cool, and then blend again. (It probably wont’ work, but I’m willing to try…)
I have two goats in milk and get about 3 litres per day, getting a quart of cream was easy. I don’t have a food processor, but a good electric hand mixer, and a bad rep for accidentally turning Sunday’s whipping cream into butter, so I figured I was already an expert at this. Well, I beat that well chilled cream for 20 min at turbo speed and nothing much happened. 40 min: some thickening. An hour and 15 min. : whipping cream. 1 hour 45 min: very thick; rich creamy whipping cream, but still no butter. By now, my mixer attachment started coming apart. Changed attachment. Over 2 hours: looks a bit like cottage cheese, no balls of butter. So then I decided to put the mixing bowl into the ice water and continued beating. Finally I started to see the butter milk separating out and some lumpy mass forming, which I eventually, after over 2.5 hours of beating, poured into a strainer with cheese cloth and then squeezed together in ice water. Once it was a big ball, you could not really squeeze anything out of it. Salted it and pressed it into square glass dish. Result after almost 3 hours: the BEST BUTTER I ever tasted, absolutely amazingly creamy at room temp. wonderful taste, everyone in my family just loves it. But not sure I can put my mixer through this again. Lessons learned: keep it chilled while churning it, letting it warm extends the process.
Thanks for the info, we’ve been raising goats for years and just love them. We’ve made cheese and have always drank their milk . My youngest son ,who will soon be 20 yrs old was raised on a Nubian nanny ‘s milk. She must have been 12yrs old when she got to old and feeble, and had to be put down. I’m telling you now , it almost killed me and my family when we lost her. We have daughters and grand daughters out of her so she’s still with us , sort of. Love your blog. Thanks again!!
I just skimmed off the thick cream and put it in a jar with marbles and shook it up and it totally worked! I am so excited! Of course for bigger batches I will need to use my hand mixer. Is there any other equipment that works besides a mixer? I have a food processor but will it get too warm? Or maybe if I use the dough attachment?
Can’t wait to make my own goat milk butter!
Thanks, Sara
I was wondering if the butter you make tastes a little different than regular butter. Goat cheese has a certain flavor and I curious to know if the butter had that same flavor, or something like it.
Hi Emily, it tastes the same to us over here!
Does goat butter taste the same as cow butter? Or does it have that certain goaty flavor?
Hi Ruthanne-
Fresh properly handled milk does not typically have the goaty flavor. This article gives some good information on it: https://www.weedemandreap.com/does-goats-milk-taste-bad/
Thank you -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
I read in a book last week that goat butter was used in Egypt as face cream. I want to make some, but we go through our milk too fast for it to separate at all.
Interesting!!
I love you, DaNelle (: Not in a weird way, just in a what-would-I-do-with-all-things-goat-without-you kind of way. Thank you!
Bahahaha! You just made my day!
After sticker shock of American made cream separators ($2000-4000+) I found a Russian made separator for $150. It runs on 230 volts being from Russia and all, and I picked up a special inverter on ebay for a song. Less than $100.
Also I hadn’t yet bought a butter churn from Lehman’s when I was trying to whip cream in a blender and went a little too long and got got butter. Happy mistake!
Yummy! I can’t wait to try this! One question, you said in a previous response that you can use the leftover milk like normal, does that include cheese making?
Kaileigh,
The leftover milk after scraping off the cream can be used for cheese making or yogurt, it will just be a little more low-fat. The milk leftover from butter will be buttermilk, so a different substance completely. I wouldn’t use that liquid for cheese making:)
Great in corn bread though
Oh so interesting, thank you for this! I always wondered how you got the cream out of the milk. We have been drinking goats milk for the last 18months from my mothers goats as we don’t tolerate cows milk very well. We have just bought our first Saanen goats for our new 10 acre section. They are such little sweeties. Our girl Edith will be going to meet the buck that my mother has borrowed for her girls in the next few weeks.
How exciting!
Howdy! I suck in the kitchen. My husband and my children do most of the cooking. 🙂
Could you please do a video about the art of goat butter making? Thanking you in advance!
Haha, sure! I’ll add it to my list!
You have made me curious to try goat butter, I will look for it now at my local farmers market.
Your blog has convinced us to start our own little homestead. We are currently living in Florida, going to be making the trip to Tennessee as soon as tax return comes in next year. After that we will be working towards goats and chickens 😀 My question here is, once you remove the cream from the milk, what do you do with the milk? Does it taste any different? Can you still use it for cooking like you would the regular milk?
Hi Nicole,
How exciting! In answer to your question, we drink the milk as if it’s regular milk. The good thing about goat’s milk is that there will still be some cream left in the goat’s milk. With cow’s milk, so much cream rises to the top that you’ll only have watery skim milk left:)
Thanks for the reply! I`ve been doing research for about a week now on various ideas we want to do, but getting up there is the first step. So far looking at goats for milk and chickens for eggs/meat. Thinking about bees too as I`ve found this nifty beehive called a “Flow” beehive that simplifies the beekeeping process a bit and seems to be a good deal for beginners.
Have you ever considered keeping bees?
Hi Nicole,
We have considered keeping bees, but a common problem is that they can become aggressive from the heat. We probably won’t ever get them:)
I finally skimmed off 2 cups of goat cream and made butter… It tasted not good. It has a horrible after taste and it is kinda bitter. I have no idea what the heck I did to make it taste like this. The goats milk is delicious and sweet. What could have happened to my butter. I have made cow butter and all was awesome but can’t figure out why my goat butter went so terribly wrong:) Think you can help me anyone?
Hi Evone-
I’m sorry your butter is turning out bitter. If your milk seems fresh, then it may be that the milkfat (cream) is turning rancid. Sometimes even the tiniest bit of bacteria getting into the mix and growing can cause this. Sometimes exposure to light and heat can break it down too. I’d say give it another try and just be extra careful with the cream and be sure to salt it in the end like the recipe says. This will help keep it from getting rancid as well.
Good luck and I hope your next batch of butter turns out great! -Bobbi (DaNelle’s Assistant)
hi DeNelle. I’m new to your website, and i have only read a few articles, but from what i can tell you are a goat expert! my family and I are going to be moving to a more rural area, its nothing to huge, and we have neighbors, but we have this, maybe half acre to one acre field behind our house. It is overgrown, and has a large variety of different plants and flowers, and from my previous research and reading, i think that is good(?) for goats. but here in Ohio, we have extremely harsh winters, and blistering summers. We are operating on a tight budget, and small space, and we want 2-3 nigerian milkers/pets. do you have any recommendations for us city folk on how in the world we get started? Also, just some miscellaneous questions; Do goats stay around the house, even if they get out of their enclosure? and how do you deal with an aggressive goat? thank you in advance, have a great day!
Hi Zach, that actually sounds like the perfect situation for goats! They can handle extreme temperatures (we live in AZ and currently are experiencing triple digit temps) and they will go to town on an overgrown pasture. To get started, I have this article here: https://www.weedemandreap.com/buying-your-first-goat/
Also, goats won’t run off, but they’ll keep wandering, eating and searching for better food. Most goats are not aggressive at all, unless it’s a buck (male goat). We don’t keep a male goat here, we breed with a male goat about a mile away from us (we just bring our doe over to their house for a month). Here’s what we feed our goats: https://www.weedemandreap.com/what-do-goats-eat/
I love that you just posted this. I borrowed my friend’s cream separator a few weeks ago and tried to make butter but the cream wasn’t creamy enough. I don’t think the separator did a good enough job getting only the cream out, so instead of investing in one I’m going to try this method! We’re getting about 3/4 of a gallon of milk a day so we should be able to get a good amount of cream for butter every week I just need to be more patient!
Also, I just wanted to let you know that you inspired me 2 years ago to get goats. It was a scary thing for me and you made it seem so do-able. Thanks to you I was able to talk my husband into getting goats too! Now we live on almost 5 acres and are up to 12 goats at the moment. That includes 2 very pregnant nigerian dwarfs so we will have more very soon! 🙂
Hi Alycia! That’s so cool! 12 goats! Whoa, you are definitely a weird goat person now 😉
Thanks for the instructions! I’ll have to try this early next year when my Mini Lamanchas are in milk (they’ll be having their first ever date with a buck here in the next month or 2). I have always thought that a cream separator was the only way to make butter from goats milk, so it’s nice to see that there’s an alternative method for those who don’t want to buy more equipment.
I know, it was a nice alternative!