Butter in bulk is cream, churned: about half of the cream comes out as butter and the rest as buttermilk, so 200 pounds of cream make about 98 pounds of butter. Culture the cream the night before, churn it at the right temperature, wash it until the water runs clear, and salt it by weight. The buttermilk is a second product, not waste. Done this way, a creamery that churned 2 quarts at a time makes about 196 rolls from a run, and the cost of an 8-ounce roll falls from $8.74 to $3.27. Below is the recipe at two sizes, the steps, the yield, what a roll costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write cream, culture and salt as percentages.
- Ripen the cultured cream overnight, then chill it to churning temperature.
- Churn until the butter breaks from the buttermilk.
- Wash until the water runs clear; leftover buttermilk spoils butter.
- Salt by weight and shape rolls by weight.
- About half the cream is buttermilk: sell it.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
North Fork Creamery, the made-up creamery on Long Island, New York, I use in these examples, tested its cultured butter 2 quarts at a time before churning in its licensed dairy plant. The recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 4 lb | One batch, 100 lb | The run, 200 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy cream, 40% fat | 99.3% | 3.97 lb | 99.3 lb | 198.6 lb | $2.00 |
| Salt | 0.7% | 0.03 lb | 0.70 lb | 1.40 lb | $0.40 |
| Butter culture | 0% | 0.00 lb | 0.02 lb | 0.04 lb | $350.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 4 lb | 100 lb | 200 lb |
The 200 pounds cost $411.68 in ingredients, nearly all of it cream. Cream at 40% fat makes butter at about 82%, which is why the yield is about half. Butter has to be at least 80% milkfat to be called butter. Margins are in butter profit margin.
The steps, at 200 pounds
- Culture the cream. The culture stirred into pasteurized cream, ripened overnight at about 65°F.
- Chill to churning temperature. About 55°F; colder takes longer, warmer makes soft, greasy butter.
- Churn. About 100 pounds a churn, until the butter breaks into grains and the buttermilk separates.
- Drain and save the buttermilk. Into clean cans for the farm shop.
- Wash. Cold water, churned and drained, until it runs clear.
- Work and salt. The water worked out, salt worked in by weight.
- Shape, wrap and label. 8-ounce rolls by weight, wrapped, labeled with the churn's lot and date, and chilled.
The run takes about 10 hours of labor, with cleaning.
What a roll costs at each size
| Per roll | Kitchen batch, 4 lb | Bulk run, 200 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $3.49 (grocery prices) | $2.10 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.25 | $0.15 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $5.00 (15 min a roll) | $1.02 (3.1 min a roll) |
| Cost of a roll | $8.74 | $3.27 |
Cream from the farm's own tank instead of bought by the quart cuts the ingredients by two-fifths, and the labor falls from 15 minutes a roll to about 3. The buttermilk isn't costed here; selling it adds a second product from the same cream. The wraps are in how to package butter for sale.
Made in a dairy plant
Butter for sale is made from pasteurized cream in a licensed dairy plant, and in some states it's graded too; a home kitchen can't make it for sale, in can you sell butter from home.
Get the calculator
Download the butter scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the churns, what comes out after the buttermilk share, the rolls it fills and the cost of each roll; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average buttermilk share. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Salted, unsalted and an herb butter, churns twice a week, cream from the farm's tank, and buttermilk to sell before it sours. A sheet can say how much cream a run needs, but not how much butter a churn really yields this month, or which churn a roll came from.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with cream bought by the can and used by the pound, and the cost of every roll comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the cream, salt and culture on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of cream it used, and gets a lot of its own for the rolls, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a buttermilk share that creeps up shows in the numbers. A can of cream that soured is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Wednesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which cream went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real buttermilk share | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Cream that soured | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.