Cultured butter?

This one is new to me. I hear it puts regular butter to shame but I have not eaten this before (not that I know of). Has anyone made this? If you have can you explain the taste compared to regular butter? I found a video but what are your experiences?

I happen to have made some this past weekend

I've been making it for a few months now and slowly building up the courage to let the cream ripen fully. This weekend I think I nailed it.

Raw cream, when left to stand at room temperature gets thicker and thicker and starts to taste sour but not like store bought sour milk. The flavour is more like yoghurt when you make it at home, not store bought yoghurt one tends to get in North America (too sweet and goopy).

The end product is a butter with a very distinct acidic bite to it that counteracts the fattiness of the butter. This is from lactic acid in the butter and it brings to life the butter, and I think enhances the flavour.

Think of the difference between olive oil dressing on a salad, and a vinaigrette. The acid in the vinegar cuts through the oil, and lifts the entire dish.

I get the milk and skim it. I use the skim milk for my tea, cereal etc and I freeze the cream.

Once I have collected about 1/2 a gallon of frozen cream, I let it thaw. I get a big seperation of thick cream and milky watery liquid (skimmed cream is pretty thin compared to store bought whipping cream).
I separate the thickened cream from this liquid and let it sit in my churn for about 18-24 hours depending on what time of year it is.

I don't add any butter milk. There are enough enzymes in the raw milk to do the job by itself. A trick here is that the cream needs contact with the air to develop the lactobacillus bacteria so a shallow, wide container is better than a tall, narrow one.

I also cover the jar with a towel or paper towel so air can circulate.

When the cream is ready it will have set like in the video.

I stopped using a beater because of the mess it made. I also found my hand churn is about as fast as the beater anyway. A beater is designed to put air into a mixture but a churn is designed to send concussion into the cream. It is the shock wave that bursts open the protein encased fat globules and creates butter, not the presence of air.

I made my churn for about $2. It's a 1/2 gallon pickle jar with a hole cut in the lid. A dowel passed through the hole and attached to the end is a cross made from two pieces of flat wood. I then pump the dowel up and down to make it go.

I typically churn 1/4 gallon of cream at a time but I could get away with 1/2 gallon because by the time the cream has thawed and I've separated it again, 1/2 a gallon of skimmed cream is reduced to about 1/4 gallon.

Thank you, that was very informative.

If you start with raw sweet cream, and make butter with it, all of the friendly 'critters' present in the raw cream will still be there. You can get cultured butter just by letting raw sweet cream butter age in the refrigerator. My mother has a sure-fire way to turn sweet cream butter into cultured butter quickly, that she discovered quite by accident... She makes raw sweet cream butter a few pounds at a time using an electric churn attached to a large glass jar. She would wash the butter in the jar by kneading the butter in several changes of water. One evening she didn't have time to spread the butter out to salt and freeze, so left the mass of butter floating in cool water in the covered jar. Apparently the temperature and environment and lack of salt made for a quick culture, as in the morning it tasted and smelled like aged butter! I LOVE cultured butter! I think that it has a faint cheesy flavor, a richer more pronounced presence. Cultured butter, aged in the fridge for a few months(yes, it keeps forever) takes on a 'parmesan' note. Cultured butter used in baking is truly excellent... Actually being able to taste the butter in a baked good is something most people have never experienced.

Interesting anecdote... I once had a large tub(you know, recycled cool whip container type situation) of raw butter get pushed to the back of the fridge. It was there a LONG time. Upon tasting it we found it to be cultured past the point of our liking. We gave the whole thing to the dog. It took her about three or four days to eat it... In this time she went from having ticks and fleas to being COMPLETELY bare of any detectable parasite. I don't know if it did something to her blood pH, or if it just changed the way she smelled, but for the rest of the season(late spring up until winter) she remained pest free. It was awesome.