Goat's Milk Butter

[angevin]

I had this at fish. , loved it, but can't find it. I've tried the Reading Terminal and DiBruno's with no luck.

Anyone know who carries it?

[Special K]

I just bought some here in Seattle last week (PCC market in Fremont). Haven't tried it yet - thanks for reminding me.

[wkl]

i'm suprised dibruno's doesn't have it. maybe they were just out of it. did you ask them?

there is an english brand i buy at janssens in wilm, del. it's very good.

here's the one i'm referring to:

http://www.sthelensfarm.co.uk/more_info.asp?current_id=82

Edited March 1, 2010 by wkl (log)

[angevin]

Thanks wkl - at least I have a visual now when looking.

DiBruno's said they sometimes bring it in, but as of yesterday they weren't carrying it.

Special K - when I had it, it had some coarse sea salt stirred in. If your butter is unsalted, you might want to try that. When spread on bread, the bit of crunch is intriguing.

BTW - I LOVE Seattle!

[Shel_B]

http://meyenberg.com/wheretobuy

I've had Meyenberg products and found them, especially the butter, to be quite satisfactory.

[angevin]

Thought I scanned the dairy cases at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, but I'll check again with a more focused eye.

Thanks!

[Special K]

Special K - when I had it, it had some coarse sea salt stirred in. If your butter is unsalted, you might want to try that. When spread on bread, the bit of crunch is intriguing.

BTW - I LOVE Seattle!

Thanks. I'll try it.

We love Seattle, too - it's a great place to live - and EAT!

[Carole]

You're on the same search that I am since I tasted it at Fish!

I've been checking around the Philadelphia area for about a month now with no luck. I've tried all places already mentioned (both my local TJ and WF said they don't carry it). I checked with some of the smaller markets and also no luck. I did call Wegman's in Collegeville and Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting and they both carry other brands of goat butter. Haven't made it to either to try them.

[percyn]

Wegmans has it. I have bought it there a couple of times.

[Carole]

I bought the goat butter from Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting yesterday and had it on my toast this morning. The brand is Cabrima and is from Belgium. They had both unsalted and salted and I bought the salted. It was very lightly salted and didn't taste nearly as "goaty" as the Meyenberg that I had at Fish. It was very pale in color and the milk fat content is 85%. To me it is much too bland and I didn't like it nearly as much as the Meyenberg. To be honest it looked like lard – but at least it didn't taste like lard. Melted almost immediately on the warm toast.

Don't think I'll buy that brand again ....

Guess a trip to Wegmans is in order.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Carole (log)

[rlibkind]

Seth Kalkstein, manager of the Fair Food Farmstand and former cheese manager for DiBruno's Chestnut Street, was educating me a bit about goat cheese at the Local Growers, Local Buyers event Monday evening, and it goes long way to explaining why goat butter is a rarity.

It all comes down to homogenization, or the natural equivalent thereof.

Cow milk easily separates into cream and non-cream portions, as anyone who remembers milk before the days of homogenization can attest. Goat milk, and to a lesser extent sheep milk, do not. That means that rather than just skimming the cream off the top of a container of milk, goat milk must first be separated because the cream and remainder are pretty much homogenized to begin with. So to produce goat butter you've got a significant extra step requiring a centrifugal separator, a significant investment for most goat milk producers.

This extra step alone makes goat butter more expensive.

[Special K]

I bought the goat butter from Whole Foods The brand is Cabrima and is from Belgium. To me it is much too bland and I didn't like it nearly as much as the Meyenberg. To be honest it looked like lard – but at least it didn't taste like lard. Melted almost immediately on the warm toast.

Don't think I'll buy that brand again ....

Wow, the brand I got was Cabrima and I liked it a lot (my first taste of any kind of goat butter). Now I can't wait to try the Meyenberg!!

[Porthos]

rlibkind,

Thanks for the info.

[xxchef]

To be honest it looked like lard – but at least it didn't taste like lard.

Goat butter is always almost pure white unless coloring (usually annatto) is added, just like cheeses made from goats milk. This us because the yellow coloring naturally found to some degree or another in cow's milk comes from carotene. Goat are very efficient utilizers of the carotene in their bodies and almost none passes through to the milk. It is sometimes hard for the uninitiated to get used to white butter.

As for the flavor not being "goaty", most producers (and many consumers) would see that as a good thing. The goaty flavor/aroma comes from the capric acid naturally occurring in goat milk. Goat milk is very fragile and if it is at all abused (less then clean milking environment, not cooled properly, agitated too much, not used in a timely manner, etc, etc, etc.) the capric acid will "kick-out" much more, giving the end product a stronger flavor. Strong flavor can also come from improper feed or contamination by the musk oils from the males (bucks). Additionally, there are breeds of goats (Toggenburgs most notably) and family lines with in breeds that tend to have stronger flavored milk.

It is much harder to make good, fresh, clean-tasting goats milk dairy products than it is to make "goaty" ones.

Edited March 12, 2010 by xxchef (log)

[Carole]

xxchef, thanks for the info!

I'm now curious to see if the flavor 'ages' and becomes more goaty as it gets older.

I grew up in Minnesota and remember from my youth when the margarine came only in white. They weren't allowed to color it to look like butter. My folks only used butter but I remember seeing it at the neighbors and wondering why they'd eat Crisco on their toast. So that goat butter color reminded me of that - and that wasn't a good thing!

[angevin]

Thanks rlibkind and chef for all of the great information - I'm getting quite an education from asking a simple question. Which of course is the beauty of forums like this one.