Goat Milk Gelato in Sweden

Episode 167
For the Love of Goats

Transcript

Intro 0:03
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat, whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures. We’ve got you covered. And now here’s Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann 0:18
Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s episode! This is another one of those episodes for those of you who have goats that you just love so much that you think you probably need to put them to work so they can help start paying for themselves. I’m joined today by Oskar Edwall, who is from Sweden and started a business making goat milk gelato. Welcome to the show today, Oskar!

Oskar Edwall 0:41
Thank you. So happy to be here. I love your show.

Deborah Niemann 0:44
Thank you. So of course, the first question in my mind is, what came first, the goats or the gelato? In other words, did you say I want to start a gelato business, because I love gelato, and so you went about learning how to do that and then got the goats, or did you have the goats and realize that you needed to put them to work?

Oskar Edwall 1:04
Yeah, initially, I was just looking for a glass of goat milk, and I was really hard to find one. And I found one person, or a farmer, who was selling goat milk, and I could buy a little bit, but she was so far away. I, initially, I worked a little bit for that milk, like, you know, like a farm work in exchange for some milk. And then she thought it was kind of nice, so she asked me if I could work a little bit more in exchange for some goats. And I said yes, because I had some land at home. So I thought, I might as well try it.

Deborah Niemann 1:34
Okay, so how many goats did you start with?

Oskar Edwall 1:37
Five. And then the same summer, I bought another six.

Deborah Niemann 1:42
And what breed do you have?

Oskar Edwall 1:43
Well, I started with it’s called Swedish country goat, I suppose, if you just translate it directly, but it’s a dairy breed that is very popular in Sweden. The upsides of it that is has quite high yield, but the downsides is that it has a very low fat milk protein percentage.

Deborah Niemann 2:01
Obviously, you did not need five goats if you just wanted a little goat milk for yourself to be able to drink. So when did you decide to start a business?

Oskar Edwall 2:11
People came when as soon as they saw that I have goats, they came and they asked if I were selling some cheese or something. So I started making it on demand, basically cheese. I just been selling it a little bit to customers like that, friends, really. But it was my third year having goats that I was feeling like, you know, it is a lot of work to have goats, and I don’t get, like, a lot of milk. It’s not like a huge operation. So I started thinking how I can make the most worth of it? Like, yeah, I realized that ice cream, you don’t need, actually, a lot of milk to make it. You can sell it for quite a bit of money.

Deborah Niemann 2:48
And so then, how did you settle on gelato instead of just regular ice cream?

Oskar Edwall 2:53
I think it’s a lot to do with the hype around it, kind of, in Sweden right now, everybody’s a bit curious, like, what is it really? And I was also curious, because I didn’t actually know what was the difference between gelato and just ice cream. I learned that there is some misconceptions, actually about what’s the difference between, like, gelato and ice cream, because really, gelato just means ice cream in Italian, right?

Oskar Edwall 3:17
There is a lot of different ways that you would make ice cream in Italy. But the original way that they would make it in North Italy involves, just like cream, milk and egg yolks and sugar and some honey, usually, yeah, I think there’s that type of gelato, which is called gelato alla crema. And then you would have the Sicilian type of gelato that is called gelato al latte, because when they started making it more in Sicily, they didn’t have the so much cream. So they would use the milk only, and then they would use cornstarch to thicken the batter, so to say, and to get the same kind of consistency as you run it through the freezing machine.

Deborah Niemann 3:56
Oh, wow, that’s interesting. So how did you learn to make gelato then?

Oskar Edwall 4:01
I just really experimented a lot. In the beginning, I wanted to make it with like pure only goat milk and no added cream due to many reasons. Of course, I was thinking maybe people who don’t tolerate cow dairy will come and buy my ice cream, but I found it was really hard to get the right type of consistency doing it that way. So eventually I added in cream, and I experimented with the milk and cream and egg yolk combination, trying, like different percentages of each and just evaluating constantly the results. And yeah, the process, I learned it a lot from looking at YouTube videos and reading. I found a book from called Andrea Soban from Italy. So it’s like third generation gelato chef who has a very successful business and wrote a really good book about it.

Deborah Niemann 4:51
Okay, where do you sell your gelato?

Speaker 1 4:53
I’ve been selling mainly out of a ice cream truck that I have parked in a harbor where it’s kind like a lot of tourists. So in the book that I just mentioned, Andrea says In the beginning, First Chapter, or the first line even, it’s like, are you ready to start your ice cream business? You know, the most important thing is location, and then it is location. And the third thing is, of course, location.

Deborah Niemann 5:16
Okay, so you’re not asking people to come out to your farm to get the goat milk gelato.

Oskar Edwall 5:23
We don’t have the parking here anyway. I think eventually, if I get another place, it could work like that, because there is actually one place pretty close by here. They have that kind of concept that they buy the milk from the neighbor’s farm, and they’re out in the middle of nowhere, and they have been a huge success. Actually, they use, of course, cow’s milk.

Deborah Niemann 5:43
Okay, so have you thought about buying milk from other farmers or increasing the number of goats that you have to increase your business?

Speaker 1 5:51
Yeah, actually, I do buy milk from nearby as well from cows. In the beginning, everything was made with goat’s milk, all my flavors, and then eventually I started to run out of goat’s milk for everything, so I started to use cow’s milk for some flavors, and still keeping some, which is goat’s milk and cream from cows. You could make, if you have a lot of goat’s milk, you could make your own cream, and that would be even cooler than what I do, but I think it’s a lot of work, and you need more milk, so that’s why I use the regular, organic dairy cow cream.

Deborah Niemann 6:28
What’s the butter fat percentage for the breed of goats that you have?

Oskar Edwall 6:32
Yeah, well, as I said, I started with the Swedish dairy goat, but I also have the Anglo Nubian goats, so I have three of those that are in milking and cooking the Swedish dairy goat, it goes between 2.7% fat content to 3.3 from yeah early season to late. And I think the Anglo Nubian is like four, 4.5

Deborah Niemann 6:55
Right. Yeah.

Oskar Edwall 6:57
Even five, maybe at some point. I’m not sure, because I haven’t tested it that much.

Deborah Niemann 7:01
So I’m sure that as soon as people heard that you are in Sweden, they immediately started wondering, what’s it like to have goats in Sweden? So I know one of the things that I immediately thought of, because I’m part Swedish I’m always wondering, like, how my ancestors survived in a place that had such long days in summer and such long nights in winter. Does that present any kind of a challenge with your goats?

Oskar Edwall 7:24
You know, the long days in summer, I feel, to me, it’s very advantageous, because I rise early and I can work all day. Basically, the light makes it so that you don’t tire as easily, I suppose. And, yeah, this business doing ice cream plus goats, it’s a lot of work, so I think that’s good. But then, yeah, as you say, the long or the short days in winter, I’m not looking forward to it. It goes dark around 5pm I think in December, January.

Deborah Niemann 7:53
And then what time does the sunrise?

Oskar Edwall 7:55
Oh, you mean winter?

Deborah Niemann 7:56
Yes.

Oskar Edwall 7:57
I don’t know. Maybe like 8am.

Deborah Niemann 8:00
Okay.

Oskar Edwall 8:00
Sometimes 9 something like that.

Deborah Niemann 8:03
Okay, that’s not too much worse than Illinois, actually.

Oskar Edwall 8:08
Okay, cool.

Deborah Niemann 8:09
Yeah, I was thinking that it was much worse, like we went to Alaska once, and it was in May, and I think that the sun went down from like about 1am to 3am in the summer. It was really, really extreme. I guess I never actually looked at the map to see what your latitude was.

Oskar Edwall 8:30
Right? I think that it’s worse in the north of Sweden, like, especially if you go very much north in Sweden. But nobody lives in the very north. Are very few. But yeah, the further up, because it’s a very long country on the map, but the very south, we don’t get much snow usually.

Deborah Niemann 8:30
That makes sense. So in the United States, goats are not nearly as common as cows, which makes it hard to find vets that know how to treat goats. And used to be 20 years ago, when I got started, it was also hard to find good goat feeds and minerals and stuff. Is that a challenge in Sweden?

Oskar Edwall 9:05
Yeah, I would say for minerals, I use the one that is just for cows, and then I also add extra copper for free choice. Yeah, there is some veterinaries who are more familiar with goats. It’s probably kind of similar to the situation where you are in the US with cows being much more common than goats, but there is still some traditional vet here.

Deborah Niemann 9:27
Okay, did you have any kind of a background in livestock before you got these goats? Or did you start at Ground Zero, basically.

Oskar Edwall 9:36
It was kind of Ground Zero, but I also did live with a friend just a little bit more North than here. He has cows, and he does like rotational grazing with the cows, and so I was at least a little bit familiar with animals.

Deborah Niemann 9:50
Are you able to do rotational grazing with your goats?

Oskar Edwall 9:53
I haven’t been able to do it as well as I wanted to, but I will make an effort now to fix the situation so that I can have better rotational grazing.

Deborah Niemann 10:04
Do you have mostly grass, or do you have some browse and evergreens and stuff?

Oskar Edwall 10:08
There is really big variety of different things in the paddocks that they can eat from a lot of bushes and trees and stuff like that, but also quite a bit of grass and herbs. Yeah.

Deborah Niemann 10:19
So the Swedish dairy goats, are they similar in size to the Nubians?

Oskar Edwall 10:24
No, the Nubians are much taller, and I would say that probably the Swedish dairy breed, they weigh about 80 to 100 pounds. And the Nubians, I think my tallest Nubian, weighs probably 140 pounds, or something like that.

Deborah Niemann 10:39
All right. Wow. So that is quite a bit of difference. Yeah, and how many do you have now?

Oskar Edwall 10:44
At the moment, is 14 total, with three Nubian and the two Nubian kids.

Deborah Niemann 10:49
Okay, are you doing any kind of extended lactations, or do you rebreed them every year?

Oskar Edwall 10:54
Well, the buck missed one last season, so she’s been milking since. That works really well for her. So, but that’s just one. The rest of them, I kept breeding now, and I think I will this season too.

Deborah Niemann 11:08
Okay, it gets pretty cold there. So do you sell the gelato year round or only during the warmer months?

Oskar Edwall 11:15
Well, yeah, it’s, um, since it’s pretty new right now, the business. I started it, and it was like, I didn’t know what to expect, but I sold a lot of ice cream this summer, and that was, of course, very intense. And I made, like, batches of 60 kilos of ice cream every day almost. But now people are still asking for it. So there is this, like farmer’s market, where there is a Facebook group, you can pre order your food from the producer directly, and we all come to your parking lot at a specific time and date. You just give the product to the consumer. So I’m taking part of that. I’m also in contact with some stores to sell my product in the city as well.

Deborah Niemann 12:00
Okay, so do you think you’re gonna stick with gelato? Are you gonna branch out into any other dairy products anytime soon?

Oskar Edwall 12:06
I am making a Greek style yogurt, which is actually it’s perfect for my machines, because I have, like, ice cream pasteurizer, and I can just use it to make yogurt as well. I can just program it to heat the milk, and then to cool it down and keep it at 40 degrees, which is cell system. It’s perfect. And then I just strain it. That works for any type of milk with the Greek yogurt, because doesn’t really matter what percentage of fat and protein there is from the start, just strain it till the desired consistency.

Deborah Niemann 12:39
Okay. This is all really exciting and fun to talk about. Is there anything else that you think listeners would find interesting about what you’re doing, either with your business or raising goats in Sweden?

Oskar Edwall 12:52
Yeah, I wanted to share this idea about the ice cream from the goat milk, just because, to me, it’s been really profitable, and I think you can do it with just a few goats. Actually, I’m using the milk mainly just from my Nubian goats. So that makes it only three mainly that I’m making the ice cream from, and I can still make a lot of it. So if you have, let’s say you just have a few goats, you can also freeze milk and thaw it and use it for the batter. So like you said in the beginning, for the goats to start paying for themselves.

Oskar Edwall 13:24
When I started this business, I said to myself that it can’t just be that it’s a fun thing that people come because they want to try the goat milk gelato. It has to be actually like a really good product to compete on the market of just ice cream. And the way to, I think, to achieve that is to have fresh egg yolks. You need real sugar, of course, and I also add honey into the mix. And I do that after pasteurizing the batter. And you do need a certain amount of milk solids, is what you call it, and that includes the fat content the sugars and the protein content. If your milk has a higher fat or protein content, you don’t need to add as much of those as you would need in a lower quality milk. But I do add cream, and I add milk protein from goats as well to my gelato. I think it’s excellent how it turns out.

Deborah Niemann 14:19
Awesome. So if somebody is sitting there and thinking, wow, this sounds a lot less complicated than making cheese, maybe I should try this. What is the first thing you would tell them that they need to consider or think about before getting started?

Oskar Edwall 14:34
Yeah, you need a really good machine as soon as the ice cream comes out of the batch freezer. It’s what you call it. You need to transfer it into a shock freezer or a blast freezer, and that freezer is minus 40 degrees, and it makes it so that ice crystals doesn’t form. It kind of makes them like explode or something. So those two machines are pretty essential. You can come a long way without buying an actual pasteurizer. But it does make it a lot easier when you start making volume. But you can start off with just a pot on the stove, and when you do make it that way, you have to just make sure that you’re whisking the batter as you’re heating it very rigorously to not burn it, because if you burn it, and you you curdle the yolks, and it doesn’t come out as it should.

Deborah Niemann 15:24
I’ve done that once with pudding. And, yeah, that is not pretty, and nobody wants to eat it.

Oskar Edwall 15:29
Yeah. And then it’s also just like, try to source the best ingredients that you can. For example, now I’m actually going to compete in ice cream competition for Swedish National Food crafts. It’s a pretty big competition for like, all the artisanal ice cream makers is sending in or attending this competition. So I’ll be competing with ice cream that I made from fresh raspberries from really good, organic raspberry grower, and making it with those raspberries compared to just whatever raspberries? It’s just a world of difference.

Deborah Niemann 16:05
Well, good luck with that. It’s going to be fun to hear how things progress for you. It’s been so much fun chatting with you today. Thanks for joining us.

Oskar Edwall 16:14
Thank you so much.

Deborah Niemann 16:15
And that’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don’t miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time, bye for now you.