Refine yoghurt recipe

Doing too much on-the-fly. Will now start recording the method, so can refine from there.

Trial 1

1. Bring 3 liters of 2% milk to 92-94 C and keep it in this range for 15 mins. Stir continuously during this time to prevent burning the milk too much.
2. Turn off heat.
3. Add 150g honey and 1/2 tablespoon vanilla essence. Stir it in.
4. Cool milk to around 43 C
5. In sterilized containers, spoon in at least 5% to 10% by volume of a previous yoghurt batch. Or else use store bought yoghurt with live culture. 
6. When milk is cool enough, pour in the milk mixture into the sterilized containers.
7. Cap the containers and put them in a bath at 41C for 8 hours.

Result: texture was pretty good. Slightly sourish, so needs a bit more sweetness. Cannot taste the vanilla. Overall, this is pretty good yoghurt.


Trial 2

Add more sweetness and vanilla essence. Keep everything else the same. i.e

1. Bring 3 liters of 2% milk to 92-94 C and keep it in this range for 15 mins. Stir continuously during this time to prevent burning the milk too much.
2. Turn off heat.
3. Add 180g honey and 1 tablespoon vanilla essence. Stir it in.
4. Cool milk to around 43 C
5. In sterilized containers, spoon in at least 5% to 10% by volume of a previous yoghurt batch. Or else use store bought yoghurt with live culture. 
6. When milk is cool enough, pour in the milk mixture into the sterilized containers.
7. Cap the containers and put them in a bath at 41C for 8 hours.

Result: This is weird. The result is slightly sweeter, but the texture is now slightly runny (which should have been the impact of cooking time and temperature, which I did not change).

Will revert to Trial 1 again strictly. And see what happens.

Trial 3
This one’s the best yet.

Basically the same as trial 1, but ferment in bath for 10 hours instead. Texture is nice and blend of sweet/sour is balanced.