Butter Making In Pictures

I started with 2 pints of heavy whipping cream, placed them in the mixer on medium high.

Now it looks like whip cream, keep mixing.

It starts to get thicker and take on a weird soft yellow color.

This is just before the "buttermilk" breaks out of the butter. It looks kinda granular and the yellow is more pronounced.

An then it happens, the mixer and all contents sound sloshy and "buttermilk" is flying out everywhere.
Pour this off and use it like milk. It's not real buttermilk because that is cultured.

Now that the butter milk is poured off, I mix again just to get even more to break free. Once I think I've gotten all that I am going to I switch to my paddle mixer. Then add a cup or more of cold water.  Use this to 'wash' the butter. No the butter isn't going to dissolve into the water. Ever plop play dough or crisco in water? Oil/water don't mix. This washing with cold water removes any extra butter milk that may be lingering. This will spoil your butter, make sure to get it out.

Keep dumping and refilling your mixer with new cold water until the water runs clean like in this picture. Now you have butter. It won't keep as long as store bought butter since it isn't filled with preservatives. Freeze it. I salted only one "stick" of it and then made the rest plain. I figure I can salt it on an as needed basis.

This is the 4 sticks of butter I ended up with after 2 pints of cream. I did one more pint after this for a total of 1.25 pounds of finished butter. Cost wise it's probably not worth it. But I end up with the buttermilk that most people don't factor into the 'is it worth it' cost estimate. For just the butter, no for butter and butter milk.... maybe. Still, I like that this doesn't require one time use only packaging. I get my cream from a bottle that gets reused by Straus family creamery.  They aren't local, but our local dairy say's there milk is just pasteurized but I can't make cheese with it, which means they lie and it's really ultrapasteurized (UP). UP milk is dead, everything that makes it milk has been killed off by the heat of cooking it. It's white water, don't buy it. So I get my milk from out of my region because it's good quality milk and they package it in reusable containers. And now I'll get off my soap box.....

Butter making is pretty easy and it's lots of fun too!