Bitter Clabbered Milk?

[Guest guest]

Bitter Clabbered Milk?

I'm having a problem with clabbered raw milk turning bitter not sour, as

soon as it clabbers. I very much like what plain yogurt, cultured

buttermilk, home make kefir, vinegar and real fermented sauerkraut taste

like. This is different, not at all pleasant, but not unbearable either

if one is accustomed to eating greens and medicinal herbs. On the other

hand, I have never tasted clabbered raw milk, so I might not know

exactly what to look for.

Procedure:

The milk was about 3 weeks old (since milking) and still tasted sweet

and had been refrigerated the whole time. I left the milk in the plastic

bottle in which it came in on the counter top with the lid on it. I did

not hide the milk from the light. I did open it to use some of it, so

some air did get to it just before clabbering. It took several days

(3?) but it clabbered and also separated into solids and whey at

different levels in the bottle.

I let the liquid drain out through a cotton cloth to separate the whey

and curts/cheese.

The liquid portion tasted quite bitter and not very sour, it at all.

The cheese portion tasted like cheese but also a little bitter, but I

think that came from the liquid that I was not able to squeeze out of

the cheese (still using the cloth).

Questions:

+ When clabbering milk, does one let air get into it by putting a cloth

on the top rather than having a tight lid?

+ Does properly clabbered milk separate, with one of the layers being

clear (translucent)?

+ Is this bitter substance in the whey bad for you? I think it gave me

indigestion of some sort. I think it also gave me a strange aftertaste

in my mouth (or nose, or lungs) for a day or more. The aftertaste was

similar in some way to the taste one getts when recovering from a

serious cold or flu.

What are the names of the bacteria that are present in healthy raw milk

and at what temperatures do they prefer to grow and predominate the culture?

Possible Answers:

Maybe the whey was bitter because of the plant material that was eaten

by the cows. That is possible, but the milk tasted great and only after

clabbering was it bitter.

Maybe the temperature in the house was too high, about 80 versus 70 or

65 degrees?

A friend said they had gotten the bitter taste when clabbering on the

counter top, but that if the milk was left in the fridge it eventually

clabbered after a long long time and then tasted very good and sour. So

she thought that the temperature made a difference in what bacterial

culture predominated at very low temperature. This friend also doesn't

use much AC so their counter top temperature might have been higher

too. They didn't use the bitter material and used it as fertilizer.

Another friend said they just added raw honey to it to eat it.

The problem could be the prevalent ambient bacteria floating around in

the air where I live or the milk came from, since I had also opened the

milk.

Another consideration is that it might be like the so called " acetone "

smell (or taste?) that some people get when they make kefir again on the

counter top. I have experienced that problem too once in a while but

don't fully remember the detail of what it was or how it tasted.

Thanks for any help!

Grant