4 ms·

I probably paid $20 in organic whole milk retail and a few hours of time for a yield of about $7 worth of mozzarella. The economics likely make more sense for a

I probably paid $20 in organic whole milk retail and a few hours of time for a yield of about $7 worth of mozzarella. The economics likely make more sense for aged cheeses where you can have some value add in your process to make it more notably homemade. Everything about dairy in Canada is absurd anyway, so you may have better luck elsewhere. Something I can make in sufficient quantities to age and enjoy over a longer period would make the afternoon more worthwhile, imo.

smashed 3y ago
I can relate, fellow Canadian too.. Even making your own yogurt is not cost efficient. It is literally cheaper to buy yogurt than the standard ordinary milk and sour it yourself. Cheese is even worse. All the weird regulations, price control, quota, duties and import restrictions seem to ultimately benefit mostly the very large industrial transformers, leaving actual farmers with scraps and consumers with ballooning costs.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Interesting, I make yogurt and find it to be cost-effective. Perhaps that’s just because yogurt is very expensive here (Silicon Valley).
  - eternauta3k 3y ago
    Also cost-effective in Germany, at least the materials. To minimize the time cost, * don't do the initial step where you almost boil the milk * dissolve the powdered milk and starter yogurt using one of these [1] * make the yogurt directly in the boxes ("tupperware") you'll be storing it in * make large batches [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sch%C3%BCttelbecher&tbs=imgo:1 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sch%C3%BCttelbecher...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - j45 3y ago
    Yogurt is absolutely more cost effective to make at home in Canada. You can’t buy 1 gallon/4 litres of yogurt for $5 as far as I can tell. Maybe there is an angle I’m not aware of. Plus you can be free of all the preservatives.
    - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
      Plus you can be free of all the preservatives. This is the speech of a scaremonger: You might not be trying to scare folks, but you've certainly bought into it. Preservatives cut down on food waste and are an overall good for society. More folks would starve without these and more folks would wind up with foodborne illnesses. I'll mention that salt and sugar are preservatives, we've just found better methods now. Are all of them good? Nope, but food preservation was never perfect. That doesn't make it worse now.
      - j45 3y ago
        Not to distract from the original conversation, it’s great meaning your own yogurt in the quantities you’ll consume per week. No fearmongering intended. There’s lots of natural preservatives. But we know that’s not always the case with most commercial options.
      - prmoustache 3y ago
        They may be a necessary evil for large production of the industry but you can make do without them when you make your owns that you will eat in the following 3 days. It is still a bonus in that case.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - astura 3y ago
    Something I've noticed about Yogurt specifically - yogurt is very expensive at the grocery store (almost $5 for the 32 oz tub of plain store brand) but much cheaper at Walmart ($2.36 for a 32 oz tub of plain store brand).
- chronogram 3y ago
  Were you trying to make yoghurt without starting with yoghurt? All you need is a little bit of yoghurt and the bacteria will multiply and sour the milk. Same thing for kefir, fil milk and plant based yoghurts. Mozzarella is made with a sort of perpetual stew at the farm or milk factory, instead of adding a bacterial culture directly to milk like most cheeses. In the Netherlands you can find dairy farms everywhere, and some of those have a shop with some range of milk or milk products, usually what they themselves prefer the most. They know how it works, so they can replicate it and it becomes no problem.
  - smashed 3y ago
    I think I was not clear enough. First there is a floor price on milk. Milk cannot legally be sold below that floor price to consumers. Farmers are prohibited from selling fresh milk direct to consumers. It's illegal. Period. They can't gift it either. It has to go to a transformer to be mixed with, homogenized and pasteurized. Dairies and cheese makers, with the proper license, buy fresh milk in bulk to be transformed. Since yogurt, or cheese, is not milk, there is no floor price. Somehow this often cause the transformed product to cost less than the raw ingredients (milk) that goes into it if you were to purchase that milk as a consumer. And of course, you can only buy pasteurized, homogenized milk, which is an entire other problems. This is the case in Quebec, Canada. Other provinces have different but similar laws. The dairy industry is the only one that is protected in such a way, hence why OP commented how crazy the industry is here, as nothing else work that way.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    > Were you trying to make yoghurt without starting with yoghurt? All you need is a little bit of yoghurt Don't make it sound difficult to bootstrap. You can just use some chickpeas or chilli crowns.
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  Anecdotally, UK, the cheapest yoghurt (believe me, I have researched!) just dropped from £1.10/l to about £0.7/l - anomalous considering the rampant groceries inflation we have, but there it is. Milk is about £0.64/l, so roughly equivalent if you add in the cost of heating it. However, the price for live yoghurt is a different story - much more expensive, which is why I have recently started making my own.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    Is this UHT milk or the kind that only lasts a week?
    - verbify 3y ago
      I buy oat milk, but I assume the kind that lasts a week. UHT is not very popular on these islands.
    - t90fan 3y ago
      The latter, UHT isn't popular at all here in the UK, unlike on the continent.
    - implements 3y ago
      Fresh milk is currently £1.45 for 2.27 litres, down from £1.65 at peak. Tip for UK readers: You can put an unopened 4pt plastic milk bottle in the freezer and it will keep as long as UHT. Defrosts in a few days in a fridge. (Was handy during COVID lockdowns)
    - ttctciyf 3y ago
      Ordinary, but skimmed milk - mumsnet says you need to boil it for ~10 mins and then let it cool to ~40C before adding the live yoghurt culture. Working well so far! UHT is usable, and doesn't need to be boiled, but for that added convenience it costs nearly twice as much.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I don't think these kinda of comparisons are valid. The cheapest yoghurts have all a very bad taste and consistency in the mouth while those you will do at home taste on par with those you pay a premium for.
- foobarian 3y ago
  Not Canadian here, but isn't it expected that a large scale bulk operation would inevitably be more efficient than a small scale manual one, regardless of any regulatory factors? At the end of the day the goal should not be for an amateur to beat a cutting edge agro corp on price. There are tons of other metrics that big co. can't compete on, such as learning, unique flavor, enjoyment of a hobby, etc.
BenjiWiebe 3y ago
It is also much harder to make a good aged cheese then a good fresh cheese. There's a lot more chance for bad bacteria to contribute a bad flavor or spoil the cheese if you give it more time. Speaking as the son of a small commercial cheesemaker, who started out (~23 years ago) making cheddar that only stayed good for about a week in the fridge. Now we make aged cheddar.
bruce511 3y ago
Oh, trust me, the economics don't work out. And that's just for raw materials - if you factor your labor and energy (especially if you age it in a refrigerator) then it's even more bonkers. But its a fun hobby - if you can stand the long feedback cycles. Personally I'm pretty much only making a sort-of curd-cheese now [1] with left over (sour) milk. Its fast to make, only ages for a couple weeks, and then I use it in a quiche. Which works really well and us more of a way to use excess milk than actually "make cheese". [1] I use citric acid and heat to separate the curd, then put that in moulds to drain for 2 weeks are do - minimal pressing. Forms a firm, crumbly curd with a mild sour flavor. I made a large wheel once, and matured it for a year, and it was edible, but nothing special. That's too long for me to get the feedback I need to improve.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  If you wanted a fermentation product that is doable in the home with quicker lead times and more variation, kimchi or other pickled veg is a pretty good candidate.
  - IanCal 3y ago
    Lacto fermentation is fantastic. I do it with my 4yo son, he also comes up with new things to try. We regularly do kimchi or something similar, tomatoes, green beans, red sauerkraut. He suggested strawberries which was great. Takes about a week, cheap and very easy. A decent kimchi here is £4.50 for a small pot, maybe 250-400g? I can make 2kg+ for less. Kimchi is the only one I've seen sold out of the list too. I highly recommend trying it, if you have a vac sealer it's even easier.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      Strawberries seem like it would be similar to umeboshi, Japanese pickled plum.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are a ton of things you can play around with making at home and you by all means should if you enjoy it and want to learn more. Kombucha is another one I haven't seen mentioned here. I did a fair bit of beer brewing at one point--but mostly before there was such a great local supply of microbrews/craft brews. (You couldn't basically get IPAs, which is of course nothing like the case today.) But, yeah, you don't really save money in general and decent commercial products you can easily get many places are as good or better. There are exceptions. Some bread products (including biscuits etc.) are reasonable to make at home, especially if you don't have convenient access to a good baker. (There are a few in the city but not near me.) I find cooking in general is rewarding and can save quite a bit of money.

smashed 3y ago

I can relate, fellow Canadian too.. Even making your own yogurt is not cost efficient. It is literally cheaper to buy yogurt than the standard ordinary milk and sour it yourself. Cheese is even worse. All the weird regulations, price control, quota, duties and import restrictions seem to ultimately benefit mostly the very large industrial transformers, leaving actual farmers with scraps and consumers with ballooning costs.

gnicholas 3y ago
Interesting, I make yogurt and find it to be cost-effective. Perhaps that’s just because yogurt is very expensive here (Silicon Valley).
- eternauta3k 3y ago
  Also cost-effective in Germany, at least the materials. To minimize the time cost, * don't do the initial step where you almost boil the milk * dissolve the powdered milk and starter yogurt using one of these [1] * make the yogurt directly in the boxes ("tupperware") you'll be storing it in * make large batches [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sch%C3%BCttelbecher&tbs=imgo:1 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sch%C3%BCttelbecher...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- j45 3y ago
  Yogurt is absolutely more cost effective to make at home in Canada. You can’t buy 1 gallon/4 litres of yogurt for $5 as far as I can tell. Maybe there is an angle I’m not aware of. Plus you can be free of all the preservatives.
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    Plus you can be free of all the preservatives. This is the speech of a scaremonger: You might not be trying to scare folks, but you've certainly bought into it. Preservatives cut down on food waste and are an overall good for society. More folks would starve without these and more folks would wind up with foodborne illnesses. I'll mention that salt and sugar are preservatives, we've just found better methods now. Are all of them good? Nope, but food preservation was never perfect. That doesn't make it worse now.
    - j45 3y ago
      Not to distract from the original conversation, it’s great meaning your own yogurt in the quantities you’ll consume per week. No fearmongering intended. There’s lots of natural preservatives. But we know that’s not always the case with most commercial options.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      They may be a necessary evil for large production of the industry but you can make do without them when you make your owns that you will eat in the following 3 days. It is still a bonus in that case.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- astura 3y ago
  Something I've noticed about Yogurt specifically - yogurt is very expensive at the grocery store (almost $5 for the 32 oz tub of plain store brand) but much cheaper at Walmart ($2.36 for a 32 oz tub of plain store brand).
chronogram 3y ago
Were you trying to make yoghurt without starting with yoghurt? All you need is a little bit of yoghurt and the bacteria will multiply and sour the milk. Same thing for kefir, fil milk and plant based yoghurts. Mozzarella is made with a sort of perpetual stew at the farm or milk factory, instead of adding a bacterial culture directly to milk like most cheeses. In the Netherlands you can find dairy farms everywhere, and some of those have a shop with some range of milk or milk products, usually what they themselves prefer the most. They know how it works, so they can replicate it and it becomes no problem.
- smashed 3y ago
  I think I was not clear enough. First there is a floor price on milk. Milk cannot legally be sold below that floor price to consumers. Farmers are prohibited from selling fresh milk direct to consumers. It's illegal. Period. They can't gift it either. It has to go to a transformer to be mixed with, homogenized and pasteurized. Dairies and cheese makers, with the proper license, buy fresh milk in bulk to be transformed. Since yogurt, or cheese, is not milk, there is no floor price. Somehow this often cause the transformed product to cost less than the raw ingredients (milk) that goes into it if you were to purchase that milk as a consumer. And of course, you can only buy pasteurized, homogenized milk, which is an entire other problems. This is the case in Quebec, Canada. Other provinces have different but similar laws. The dairy industry is the only one that is protected in such a way, hence why OP commented how crazy the industry is here, as nothing else work that way.
- OJFord 3y ago
  > Were you trying to make yoghurt without starting with yoghurt? All you need is a little bit of yoghurt Don't make it sound difficult to bootstrap. You can just use some chickpeas or chilli crowns.
ttctciyf 3y ago
Anecdotally, UK, the cheapest yoghurt (believe me, I have researched!) just dropped from £1.10/l to about £0.7/l - anomalous considering the rampant groceries inflation we have, but there it is. Milk is about £0.64/l, so roughly equivalent if you add in the cost of heating it. However, the price for live yoghurt is a different story - much more expensive, which is why I have recently started making my own.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  Is this UHT milk or the kind that only lasts a week?
  - verbify 3y ago
    I buy oat milk, but I assume the kind that lasts a week. UHT is not very popular on these islands.
  - t90fan 3y ago
    The latter, UHT isn't popular at all here in the UK, unlike on the continent.
  - implements 3y ago
    Fresh milk is currently £1.45 for 2.27 litres, down from £1.65 at peak. Tip for UK readers: You can put an unopened 4pt plastic milk bottle in the freezer and it will keep as long as UHT. Defrosts in a few days in a fridge. (Was handy during COVID lockdowns)
  - ttctciyf 3y ago
    Ordinary, but skimmed milk - mumsnet says you need to boil it for ~10 mins and then let it cool to ~40C before adding the live yoghurt culture. Working well so far! UHT is usable, and doesn't need to be boiled, but for that added convenience it costs nearly twice as much.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I don't think these kinda of comparisons are valid. The cheapest yoghurts have all a very bad taste and consistency in the mouth while those you will do at home taste on par with those you pay a premium for.
foobarian 3y ago
Not Canadian here, but isn't it expected that a large scale bulk operation would inevitably be more efficient than a small scale manual one, regardless of any regulatory factors? At the end of the day the goal should not be for an amateur to beat a cutting edge agro corp on price. There are tons of other metrics that big co. can't compete on, such as learning, unique flavor, enjoyment of a hobby, etc.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago

It is also much harder to make a good aged cheese then a good fresh cheese. There's a lot more chance for bad bacteria to contribute a bad flavor or spoil the cheese if you give it more time. Speaking as the son of a small commercial cheesemaker, who started out (~23 years ago) making cheddar that only stayed good for about a week in the fridge. Now we make aged cheddar.

bruce511 3y ago

Oh, trust me, the economics don't work out. And that's just for raw materials - if you factor your labor and energy (especially if you age it in a refrigerator) then it's even more bonkers. But its a fun hobby - if you can stand the long feedback cycles. Personally I'm pretty much only making a sort-of curd-cheese now [1] with left over (sour) milk. Its fast to make, only ages for a couple weeks, and then I use it in a quiche. Which works really well and us more of a way to use excess milk than actually "make cheese". [1] I use citric acid and heat to separate the curd, then put that in moulds to drain for 2 weeks are do - minimal pressing. Forms a firm, crumbly curd with a mild sour flavor. I made a large wheel once, and matured it for a year, and it was edible, but nothing special. That's too long for me to get the feedback I need to improve.

bobthepanda 3y ago
If you wanted a fermentation product that is doable in the home with quicker lead times and more variation, kimchi or other pickled veg is a pretty good candidate.
- IanCal 3y ago
  Lacto fermentation is fantastic. I do it with my 4yo son, he also comes up with new things to try. We regularly do kimchi or something similar, tomatoes, green beans, red sauerkraut. He suggested strawberries which was great. Takes about a week, cheap and very easy. A decent kimchi here is £4.50 for a small pot, maybe 250-400g? I can make 2kg+ for less. Kimchi is the only one I've seen sold out of the list too. I highly recommend trying it, if you have a vac sealer it's even easier.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    Strawberries seem like it would be similar to umeboshi, Japanese pickled plum.
ghaff 3y ago
There are a ton of things you can play around with making at home and you by all means should if you enjoy it and want to learn more. Kombucha is another one I haven't seen mentioned here. I did a fair bit of beer brewing at one point--but mostly before there was such a great local supply of microbrews/craft brews. (You couldn't basically get IPAs, which is of course nothing like the case today.) But, yeah, you don't really save money in general and decent commercial products you can easily get many places are as good or better. There are exceptions. Some bread products (including biscuits etc.) are reasonable to make at home, especially if you don't have convenient access to a good baker. (There are a few in the city but not near me.) I find cooking in general is rewarding and can save quite a bit of money.