Making drinkable yogurt

Question

I like the taste and consistency of danactive drinkable yogurt. Google searches on making drinkable yogurt suggests adding water or milk to store bought "set" yogurt. Another said to use kefir and just blend in fruits for flavoring.

There was one post on how to make drinkable yogurt from scratch:

For making the stirred yogurt or the drinking yogurt we need to make some changes to the process for a less firm texture.

• The use of different strains and balances in your yogurt culture will change the texture of the final product.
• Less initial heating of the milk (170-185F) will be another major control point, as well as little to no hold time in at that temperature before cooling. Lower temp and time will result in less changes in the whey proteins and thus less linking of these for a thinner yogurt.
• Stirring of the yogurt part way through the final cooling stage (at 65-70F) will break up the firm yogurt texture into a much looser mass. The fruit and other additions can be added at this point.
• Finally, the yogurt should be cooled to its final temperature of 36-39F. http://www.cheesemaking.com/yogurtplus.html

I've tried adding water to set yogurt and that taste pretty nasty, At the consistency I like, it tasted more like yogurt flavored water. No tartness, not sweetness, just ugh... Am I doing something wrong, or is that what I'm going to end up with if I want really liquidy yogurt? Will any of the other methods be better for what I'm looking for?

Answer 1

There are lots of ways of doing this, depending on exactly what you want in your final product. If you want an exact flavor and texture match to your specific brand of drinkable yogurt, you're going to have to try various things and experiment to see what works. Here are some issues to consider and options. (I'm assuming here that you're using store-bought yogurt as a base, since you post instructions that tell you how to produce a more drinkable style yogurt from scratch, and those should help if you were simply planning to make the yogurt yourself.)

• Be sure you buy yogurt without any added thickeners. Sometimes commercial yogurt adds substances to help maintain a thicker texture; obviously these will get in the way.
• Try blending your yogurt (or whisking or whatever you tend to use) to break up the set part as much as possible. For "homestyle" yogurts, this may be enough to thin them significantly.
• If you prefer your "drinkable yogurt" to have fruit, etc. in it, try adding the ingredients first and blending. The fruit juices may already thin the texture somewhat.
• If you still need it to be thinner, start by adding milk. If the result isn't "creamy" enough for your taste, add a mixture of milk and something with higher milkfat (light cream, half and half, etc.) next time. If the result isn't tangy enough for your taste, you could add some acidity, e.g., lemon juice could work well if it complements fruit flavors or something. Or, as an alternative for acidity, you could just dilute with another acidified milk product, like kefir or (cultured) buttermilk. (This last option would actually be an ideal choice to maintain the "fermented milk" flavor and tang.)

To go further with that last point, frankly in your situation I'd just skip the yogurt completely and use another acidified milk product with a texture closer to what you want. Kefir and cultured buttermilk both are produced by microorganisms similar to yogurt, they have similar acidity, and (in my experience) they taste pretty similar in a "smoothie" when blended with fruit or other ingredients to yogurt. On their own, the flavors will be somewhat different from yogurt, but the flavor of a yogurt/milk/juice/whatever concoction will taste different from the plain yogurt anyway. So, personally, I'd start with a thinner fermented milk product and go from there, unless you have some particular attachment to a specific yogurt brand or something.