[darreninthenet]

My wife and I have occasionally made our own butter for years now... one thing people always forget to mention is that it goes bad really quickly. The trick is either to cut it up into chunks and freeze most of it and the remainder you keep in the fridge/defrost later will last about 3 days. Or you can add salt after you've done the separation but this does of course mean you now have salted butter... this will last up to two weeks usually.

[clickety_clack]

Do you mold it with your hands under running water to wash away the remaining fluids? Doing that and salting it makes it last for many weeks for me. I don’t even know how long it actually lasts, I’ve always eaten it all before it’s gone bad. Making butter is a way of preserving milk, so it should last more than a couple of weeks.

[Wowfunhappy]

Why does the homemade butter spoil so quickly?

[LarsAlereon]

It usually contains significant amounts of milk protein, which contribute to flavor but spoil about as quickly as milk does. Washing the butter thoroughly until well after the water is clear will improve storage time, as will salting the butter and thoroughly drying it.

[_aavaa_]

Doesn't that remove the very milk protein that makes it taste better?

[LarsAlereon]

Yes, it's a balance between flavor and storage time. If you plan to use it immediately, unwashed butter is best.

[eudamoniac]

But milk does not spoil in 3 days. Why would the butter?

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Natural, organic milk does. What you are probably used to is pasteurized, and treated with short bursts of heat. Since at least 20 years, for almost anything milky which you can find in the refrigerated parts of stores. I'm not talking about the stuff which doesn't need to be cooled, until opened, that's heated even longer, and pasteurized harder.

[eudamoniac]

What? Raw milk doesn't expire in 3 days either. More like 2 weeks. And butter unlike cheese has no problem being made from pastueurized milk, so I'm not sure why you'd bring that up.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

I've brought that up in response to milk doesn't go bad that fast. Which is against my experience. Maybe I should have that defined more precise?

Under which storage conditions? Refrigerated? Check. Closed container? Check. Climate? Any time of the year, central Europe. Check. Any time of the year somewhere in the Rockies, on the 'Western Slope', at 2600m altitude. Check. After 3 to 4 days it begins to smell and taste different. After which I won't touch/consume it anymore.

I'd be really interested in the stuff lasting 2 weeks, and the conditions under which that's possible?

edit: Again, not that highly pasteurized, homogenized, otherwise treated stuff, but fresh from the cows udder (let's call this really raw milk, which isn't on shelves anywhere, AFAIK), or only the slightest treatmeant, like 'fully organic/bio', which nowadays has a refrigerated shelf life of something like 2 weeks, there aren't any other options anymore. It's all treated. And that stuff still goes bad after opening in a few days.

[mapotofu]

It doesn’t. People have been doing this without refrigeration for a long time. The above poster did not wash off the buttermilk at the end which would cause it to spoil.

[jaapz]

When unrefrigerated, they used copious amounts of salt to keep butter from spoiling. So much so that you'd have to first wash the butter (wash the salt away) before using it.

[Induane]

I'm not sure it does. It seems to last similarly to me when I make my own as long as I make sure to use sterilized containers to make it and such. It isn't as long as margarine which is maybe the comparison? Not sure.