Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our advice column, where you can ask all your food-related questions to get digestible answers! No question is off limits!
To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.
I am curious about the caution against doing more than 2Q of yogurt at a time. Currently I'm using store bought Greek yogurt to culture my yogurt in an instant pot. We eat a LOT of yogurt. I make it with 1 gallon of milk at a time and then strain it and save it into 1Q glass storage containers.
— Lori
Great question! For some people, doing more than 2L in a batch works out fine, and for other people it becomes a disaster. My personal guess on this is that it’s largely the people with fussy yogurts who’re having more problems than those with the less fussy ones. But for some people, larger quantities will result in unset, sometimes soured-but-not-fermented, “yogurt.” This is, of course, really upsetting to people (I’d be super upset if I wasted that much milk), so we recommend that people not do it in the event that they’re one of the people who can’t get good results. And of course, we hope that the people who do brew larger batches (you are NOT the only person I know does this) have saved two backup samples of the culture just in case they at some point wind up being one of the ones who has problems with large batches. So yes, it’s totally fine to do, but you need to be aware that this could go awry at some point if your yogurt decides it doesn’t feel like doing it anymore.
I was using cultures from different sources. On packets received from Positively Probiotics it said to store in freezer. On packages from others did not say that. Will freezer damage cultures?
— Larisa
No, freezing doesn’t damage viability; it extends it! We recommend that people freeze until they’re ready to activate to ensure the culture is as fresh when you use it as it was when we shipped it to you.
I got your French Parisian sourdough culture, but have no idea how to use it.
— Radu
If you go to our site and look for sourdough with the dropdown “activating the culture” link, you’ll find instructions on how to get started.
