Heat The Milk

• Place milk into instant pot, crock pot or in a large pot on the stove.  Heat until the milk is at 180 degrees.  This will kill off any bacteria (good or bad) present in the milk that might interfere with the yogurt culture doing it’s work.
• To heat the milk in the instant pot, just push the yogurt button until the display says “boil”.  Make sure the lid is on.  The instant pot will automatically turn off when the milk gets to 180 degrees. 
• If you’re using a crock pot or a pan on the stovetop, turn it on medium heat and then check the temperature of the milk every so often until it gets to 180 degrees.

Cool The Milk

• Once the milk reaches 180 degrees, shut off the heat, remove the lids and allow the milk to cool to between 110 and 120 degrees.  I use a thermometer for this part.  If your milk is too hot, it can kill the yogurt culture, and if it’s too cold, it won’t properly turn the milk into yogurt.

Culture The Yogurt

• When the milk is cooled off to between 110 and 120 degrees, add your yogurt with active cultures in it to the milk and gently stir.  If you’re adding in sweetener and a flavoring like vanilla extract, you can also stir it in at this point. 

Incubate The Yogurt

Instant Pot Yogurt Method

• If using the instant pot, put the lid back on and push the yogurt button again until it gives you a number like 08:00 or 24:00.  This is the number of hours that it will culture the yogurt.  I usually change the 08:00 setting to be 05:00 hours by pushing the “minus” button right after selecting the 08:00.  It will remember your setting of 05:00 hours for the next time you make yogurt, and you can always adjust it as necessary.  You can culture it longer or shorter, depending on your taste. When the culturing is done, it will say "yogt" on the display.

Crockpot Yogurt Method

• For the crockpot or slow cooker method, once the milk has cooled down, stir in your yogurt culture and any sweeteners or flavorings.  Put the lid back on and wrap the crockpot in a towel.  Leave it on your counter to culture for 5 hours or up to overnight. 

Stovetop Yogurt Method

• The stovetop method is very similar.  After heating to 180 degrees, let the milk cool down, stir in your yogurt culture and any sweeteners or flavorings.  You can either wrap the pot in a towel and culture the yogurt in the pot, or pour it into a gallon jar (see video below) and wrap that in a towel for a few hours or overnight.

Individual Servings

• To make individual sized yogurt cups, pour the cultured milk into pint jars, or other small container, and then wrap them up and let them culture in a warm place.  You can also put a little bit of water in the bottom of your instant pot, and put the jars of yogurt in it.  Turn on the instant pot using the “yogurt” function and allow it to culture for a few hours or overnight.  One of our favorite things to do is put jam on the bottom of the individual servings of yogurt.  Then we can just stir the jam into the yogurt while eating it.  So delicious!

Chill Yogurt

• Once the yogurt is set, you can put it into the refrigerator to chill.
• If you want an even thicker yogurt, you can strain some of the whey off of it by placing a fine cheesecloth in a colander and allowing the extra whey to drain off over two or three hours.  You can stir gently to make sure that it continues to drain.  If it gets too thick, you can always just blend some of that whey back in with a stick blender.  I find that with pasteurizing the milk first, that I rarely have to drain off any whey.  I typically just put the yogurt into the refrigerator and eat it from there.
• Store the yogurt in your refrigerator for 2 to 3 weeks.  You can use some of this batch of yogurt as a yogurt starter culture for your next batch of yogurt.  Then you don’t ever have to buy storebought yogurt again.