As you guys know, I have been making my own yogurt with varying degrees of success. Well, actually all turned up to be yogurt but all of them have been slightly wrong. There is a distinct whey-yogurt separation. The thick yogurt will be on top while the whey on the bottom. I was told that even with this separation, there is nothing wrong with the yogurt. Just mix the whey and the yogurt back and you will get a creamy yogurt. Yes, I tried that and it works. But still, it feels like there is something wrong with that. I have seen “set” yogurt being sold in the stores and these are just like homemade yogurt and they don’t look like anything I have done. I was a little disappointed with the results.

All my previous homemade yogurt have been made with milk powder. I had thought that this could be the problem. I didn’t dissolve the milk powder into the water properly. But for my second batch, I did dissolve the milk powder with hot water and it is very dissolved. The result is just the same. There is still a very distinct whey-yogurt separation. Okay, my next thought was that the yogurt starter isn’t mixed well into the milk. So the live cultures will only consume the milk sugars at the top and left the bottom untouched. So for my next batch, I poured the yogurt starter into the bottle first before topping up with milk. And I then shake the bottle vigorously. The result - same. Exactly the same thing! There is still that whey-yogurt separation there. Perhaps I left it to ferment for too long? Can’t be, the most I left it to ferment is 20 hours. And the shortest I left is 12 hours. All the same results. So, I thought it could be the milk powder that caused the whey-yogurt separation. But from what I read on the Internet, a lot of yogurt makers successful make yogurt using milk made from milk powder. In fact, even those using bottled milk will use a little milk powder to thicken the yogurt.

And finally it hit me! The amount of yogurt starter! From what I read from the Internet, most of them will state to use about 2 tablespoon of yogurt as starter. However, their yogurt are store bought yogurt. I have been using fresh yogurt all these time (less than 3 days) which means that the culture count is significantly more than what you get from store brough yogurt. Thus when I use the 2 tablespoon of yogurt, the huge number of very live and active cultures will start to aggressively consume the milk sugars in the milk and we get the whey-yogurt separation. So with this information, I tried withabout 1/2 tablespoon of yogurt. And it works! The yogurt is formed beautifully. There is no whey-yogurt separation. Well, a lesson learned - not to be kiasu and add too much yogurt starter.