butter
Butter is legally defined as – “a product made exclusively from milk or cream, or both, with or without salt, and with or without additional coloring matter, containing not less than 80% milk fat, all tolerances having been allowed for.” (7CFR58:305)
The Normal Composition of Butter is:
Milk fat Average: 80.2% Range: 80.05 to 83%
Moisture Average: 17.2% Range:13.2 to 19.65%
Salt Average: 1.8% Range:0.0 to 2.5%
Curd Average:0.8% Range: 0.3 to 1.3%
References to butter can be found extending back over 4000 years. It was used as a food, a medicine, and an object of worship (a sacrament).
Butter production was primarily a household industry until the mid-1880’s when the population began shifting from rural to metropolitan and people no longer had their own cow (or other mammal) for milk and other dairy products.
The largest influences on the butter industry were De Laval’s separator and Babcock’s fat test. With a mechanical method to remove the milk fat, it became possible to begin centralizing the production of butter. For many years, a cooperative creamery association existed in many rural communities for the purposes of manufacturing and marketing butter. The farmers would hand separate the cream on farm and send the cream to the cooperative and keep the excess skimmed milk for use at home or for livestock feed. Having an easily conducted analysis for fat made it possible to develop a price structure for payment to the producer for the amount of milk fat they contributed to the cooperative.
There are two products generally produced by a butter manufacturer, butter and buttermilk (generally labeled as sweet cream buttermilk if the initial cream source did not undergo neutralization).
Butter is obtained by churning (inputting mechanical energy into) cream until the milk fat within the cream has gained sufficient energy to break the chemical bonds within the cream to enable it to undergo a phase inversion from an oil-in-water emulsion to a water-in-oil emulsion. The serum portion obtained after the churning of cream is referred to as sweet cream buttermilk. This ‘Sweet Cream Buttermilk’ is rarely packaged for fluid consumption but is often condensed or dried for use in frozen desserts, bakery products and other applications.
General outline of a make procedure for butter using a conventional batch churn:
1. Obtain cream (standardize or neutralize if necessary) – The higher the milk fat content in the cream the more quickly the product will churn. If the cream churns too quickly, there may be excessive losses of milk fat to the buttermilk. Slightly soured cream may be utilized if it is first neutralized back to a titratable acidity of 0.19% before continuing to the pasteurization step.
2. Pasteurize cream - 155°F for 30 minutes or 185°F for 15 seconds.
3. Store overnight (allow milk fat to re-crystallize and temperature to equilibrate) – cool to below 45°F. Lipid materials act as insulators and have different heat exchange coefficients than their serum counterparts so the overall solution does not cool at the same rate. Time is the essential factor in accomplishing equilibration.
4. Determine milk fat content of cream – obtain a representative sample from all potential sources of cream and the quantity of each source available.
5. Accurately determine weight of cream added to churn
6. Calculate amount of milk fat in churn
7. Add colorant - 15 ml (0.5 ounce)/100# of milk fat – preferably an oil soluble plant extract such as annatto. This will create a uniform color in the final product not subject to seasonal variations in beta carotene level in the initial cream based on season of year and ration being consumed by the animals.
8. Temper cream to churning temperature (43 - 46F) – minimizes churning time and assists to maximize yield of butter while minimizing fat lost to the buttermilk
9. Close churn and turn 6-8 revolutions
10. Bleed air from churn – If this release of pressure is not done the cream will meet with additional resistance from the compressed gasses within the churn leading to extended churning times and potential entrapment of the gasses within the butter granules.
11. Begin churning - approximately 45-50 minutes – exact time will depend upon several factors including, but not limited to: starting temperature, percent milk fat in the cream, age of the cream, acidity, total quantity (volume) in the churn, and speed (revolutions per minute (rpm)) of operation of the churn.
12. Stop churn when butter “breaks” – the break is the point when the phase inversion is complete, and you now have small yellow butter granules floating within the serum (buttermilk) portion.
13. Drain the buttermilk - vent churn – If the churn is not vented the moisture in the form of buttermilk will not properly drain.
14. Close up churn, work until large clumps of butter are obtained – about 3 minutes
15. Drain off excess moisture
16. Work until dry in appearance – tumble the butter within the churn for an additional 3 to 5 minutes until the inside surface of the door is dry upon opening.
17. Determine first moisture by Kohman analysis – weigh out a 10-gram sample into a previously tared metal dish. Melt the butter, driving off all moisture until the remaining butter oil begins to brown, allow the dish to cool, reweigh and determine how much moisture was driven off by difference.
18. Determine expected yield – percent milk fat times total quantity of cream placed into the churn divided by the desired fat percentage in the finished product
19. Determine moisture difference from desired moisture
20. Take moisture difference x expected butter = moisture to add
21. Add moisture and salt
22. Work until dry
23. Remove butter from churn – print and/or package
In the U.S. during 2010 a total of 1.564 billion pounds of butter were produced at 76 separate manufacturing facilities. In 1950, in South Dakota alone there were 92 creameries producing butter, now there is only one, the SDSU Davis Dairy Plant. The majority of the butter production in the U.S. is in the two states with the largest milk production volume, California and Wisconsin. California itself produced 35.6% of all the butter manufactured in 2010. Butter production increased during 2011 to 1,809,754,000 pounds for an increase of 15.7% over 2010. 82 facilities recorded butter production in the U.S. during 2011. Butter production tends to be more variable than many other dairy products as it is frequently utilized as part of the balancing system for supply and demand of all dairy foods. If there is an excess of milk production more product is diverted toward the production of butter and Nonfat Dry Milk Powder (NFDM) to provide a stable home for the milk solids until such time as there might be a shortage in production and then the butter and NFDM can be pulled out of longer-term storage to rebalance the system. Total butter production for 2015 was 1,857,998,000 pounds representing just a 0.1% increase in production when compared to 2014. 31.2% of the production was in California, the leading state in overall butter production. Overall, there were just 84 locations that manufactured butter in 2015. Total butter produced at 97 facilities in 2017 was 1,847,473,000 pounds, which was up 0.4% from 2016 but still below the 2015 level. Butter was commercially produced at 98 facilities in 2018. A total of 1,891,007,000 pounds of butter was produced breaking the previous annual production volume record set all the way back in 1940. Currently, butter is experiencing the most favorable valuation of any of the dairy products on the open commodities market. In 2019, Butter production set an all-time record, with 1,994,075,000 pounds (+1.3% over 2018) produced at 93 processing locations. In 2020, Butter production exceeded the 2-billion-pound level for the first time in history. The final tally on production in 2020 was 2,145,386,000 pounds at 103 production facilities, an increase of 7.6% over the previous year. Well over half of the total butter production is accomplished at approximately 15 facilities, primarily in the western region of the US. Total US Butter production increased another 3.5% in 2021 to a new, all-time record volume of 2,071,716,000 pounds produced at 97 locations. 2022 saw a slight decrease in overall butter volume produced. Production was down 0.2% to 2,058,743,000 pounds from 95 facilities. The overall production increased again in 2023 to a new all-time high of 2,115,028,000 pounds produced at 94 facilities.