Seasoned Advice is a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
My homemade yogurt is wonderful: thick and fresh, made out of whole milk and cultures, no sugar, just a bit of organic vanilla powder.
There's only one thing I dislike: the aftertaste is quite cheesy and metallic at the same time. Can this be due to the cultures? Or the milk itself? The pan? The container (plastic made)? Vanilla powder?
I don't know what you mean by "vanilla powder", true vanilla does not come as a powder, but there is a variety of processed products which are used for vanilla flavoring and come in powdered form.
If your vanilla powder is made from pure artificial vanillin, or contains beta carotene, it can have an unpleasant aftertaste. I would suggest dissolving some of the powder into milk and drinking it that way, to see if the aftertaste is present. Don't use too high a concentration, this will be too strong, but you can make it more than you typically use in the yogurt.
If it is not the powder, everything else you mentioned could have been a factor. Try using a new batch of storebought yogurt as a culture. Change the container to something non-reactive, preferably glass. Make these changes separately, while keeping the other factors constant, to find out which one is the culprit.
I make yogurt at home too, and always keep the process very basic. For next time, experiment the following way:
1) eliminate the vanilla powder at the beginning and instead flavor your yogurt after it is completely done.
2) for the culture, use store bought Greek style thick yogurt.
3) Make sure the final container that your cultured milk is poured into is a food-grade plastic and not metal or anything else.
4) Do not heat the milk any higher than 110 degrees F. Also heat the milk in a good grade pot whether you are using stainless or teflon.
5) During the fermentation, cover the container with a kitchen towel first and then put the lid on top of that. Leave it in room temperature for at least 8 hours.
Good luck
