Is goat butter better than regular butter?

Goat butter has less lactose, which makes it easy to digest and good for people who are sensitive to high-lactose cow butter.

What does goat butter taste like?

Goat butter has an earthy, creamy, tangy, and grassy taste. It sometimes has a strong sour smell, but if you handle it carefully and rinse all the buttermilk, you will get a good taste. The sour smell is due to leftover buttermilk, which becomes sour if it isn't rinsed properly.

Can you make butter from goat milk

Yes, you can but cream separation can be a little tricky. Goat milk has naturally small emulsified fat molecules (homogenized), making it easy to digest. It means the cream in goat milk takes longer to separate than cow milk. Sitting goat milk in the refrigerator for days will eventually form a cream layer, but it requires a lot of patience and effort. That's the reason why getting cream from goat milk can be tricky. Once you get the cream from goat milk the rest is the same as for cow butter using a whisk, blender, or shaking cream in a mason jar.

How To Make Goat Butter At Home August 28, 2025

Description

Goats are treasures for food, meat, and milk. One of the best things we can make from homestead goats is goat butter, which we can utilize in making cookies, desserts, and pies as a replacement for cow butter.

My aunt manages the goats and all the livestock in our family homestead farm in North Carolina. One of the reasons we have more goats than cows is that goats require a smaller area (about 200 square feet for each goat) to live than cows, and they are more reproductive. The process of making homemade goat butter in an organic environment is awesome. It is tricky to collect cream and then extract butter because goat milk is naturally homogenized.

The primary and critical phase of making this butter was cream. Cream can be separated from goat milk either by a cream separator or by setting the milk in the refrigerator for about 24-48 hours. My aunt and I collect cream from each batch of milk that is about 3-4 tbsp daily and save it in the freezer. Sometimes it was a complete mess handling the cream, plus it yielded a minimal amount of cream. That’s why we bought our first cream separator in 2016. It doesn’t change life, but it was definitely worth buying.

Ingredients

Scale

1 gallon of goat milk (approx. 3 liters of raw and fresh milk)

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Instructions

Refrigerate the Milk: Refrigerate the fresh raw milk for 6 hours. Refrigeration is essential to get the maximum cream.
Warm the Raw Milk: Warm the raw milk to 100°F, which is the normal body temperature of goats while milking. Warm the milk slowly on the stovetop or in a double boiler and check the temperature with a digital thermometer.
Assemble the Separator: Wash, sterilize, and assemble the disks of the cream separator. Once assembled, close the valve (switch rod) on top of the separator’s milk pot. Turn the motor on and let it run for a few minutes to warm up the machine. Place the collecting bowls underneath their respective spouts.
Separate the Cream: Pour the warm milk into a milk pot of a cream separator and turn the valve on. Collect the cream and skim milk from their respective spouts in the bowls. I got 1 and a quarter cup of cream.
Whip the Cream Until You Get Butter: Whip the cream with any Kitchen Aid, hand mixer, Blender, or food processor. You can even do it by shaking the cream in a jar or a manual hand-crank churner. I use a hand-crank churner. First, you notice whipped cream, then this whipped cream coagulates to form butter granules. This is the point where you will see fatty butter granules and buttermilk.
Run Through Cold Water: Once the butter and buttermilk separate, save the buttermilk in a jar. Run the butter through cold water and rinse until the water runs clear. Press and fold the butter and remove excess liquid using a spatula or butter paddle.
Refrigerate: Shape and wrap the rinsed butter in a cup or paper and refrigerate to firm it up. The fresh homemade butter is ready to enjoy on toast.

Notes

Refrigerate the raw and fresh milk before warming it to 100 degrees. Refrigerating the milk for several hours yields more cream than warming it straight after milking.
Warm the milk slowly for even heat distribution. The slower the temperature rises, the better for making perfect goat butter. Once the temperature reaches our desired value, shut the heat off.
Skim milk is used to make ricotta cheese or other desserts.
Remove as much buttermilk as you can. If it remains inside the butter, it may turn rancid.
Chill the cream because it will churn more easily than room-temperature cream.
Flavor the goat butter with salt or herbs for additional flavor.

Prep Time: 1 hour
Category: Spread, Meal