Subject: "Yogurt" making a success, finally
Newsgroups: Winters_Lackey:rec.food.cooking

I made strawberry smoothies this morning from my homemade cutured milk. It
really isn't yogurt. It isn't even quite as thick as kefir. I cultured it
from scalded whole milk, for 24 hours with Bifudobacterium infantis, then
added a spoonful of regular "Greek" yogurt (species unidentified) for
tanginess, and cultured for 24 additional hours.

The smoothie had added strawberries, cream and a tiny bit of sweetener
(sucralose).

I cultured in the slow cooker that Mr. Kuthe helped put together--
https://www.flickr.com/photos/155222...57643350099694

The thermostat controlls the electricity to the outlet box, which is wired
normally (in parallel). The night light is merely a power indicator. The
problem is this, there are pretty wide fluctuations in temperature because
of the robustness of the heating element, and the lag time before the
temperature inside the unit rises enough to turn off the power. After the
power goes off, the temperature overshoots way more I'd prefer, and I came
up with a solution.

I am going to re-wire the outlet so that the receptacles are wired in
series. That allows the use of a poor man's resistor (an
incandescent light bulb or two), in order to tame the output of the
heating element. I'm not in a big hurry to do this because for one batch
of yogurt I can use a smaller slow cooker that already has a low setting,
but the original use for this setup was sous vide. I also have a pump that
I bought, but haven't used yet for when/if I do use it for sous vide.

4+ hours later...
I rigged the temperature probe up to an old crock pot, and am now able to
control the temperatute +/- <3F
The Crock Pot that I'm using was free. It went unsold at the church garage
sale, and they were just going to pitch it. It didn't have a lid, but
since I seldom throw things away, I had a lid that fit perfectly.


--
--Bryan
"The 1960's called. They want their recipe back."
--Steve Wertz in rec.food.cooking 4-20-2009