Episode 13: Hope Butter

Butter is about as Minnesotan as you can get, although I guess its a little more French than Minnesotan.  But we have butter here in this great state and Hope Creamery does it particularly well.   Learn how they make it today, the same way they did it 50 years ago.

  • Angelique

    Thanks for this Daniel. I’m a big fan of Hope butter and they get a 4-cow rating from the Cornucopia Institute: http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/Ratings_Alphabetical.html

  • Cerabella Brown

    This is fascinating, but for several moments, I felt like I was watching the history channel. Are you the short version of the history channel?

  • http://www.videohaiku.com Kevin Obsatz

    Awesome – reminds me of Sesame Street, when they’d take you on a tour of some factory where potato chips are made… or was that The Electric Company?

  • Daniel Klein

    Comparisons to the History Channel and Sesame street in one video, not bad!

  • http://sweetlandorchard.com Gretchen Perbix

    I’ve seen Hope Creamery butter for sale, but never their buttermilk. Do they sell that?

  • Daniel Klein

    Hey Gretchen, they do not sell it, they have no way of regulating the fat content.

  • http://www.thegoodcooknj.blogspot.com The Good Cook

    It is always a pleasure to see people passionate and dedicated to the food they are producing. Thanks for another interesting episode.

  • http://www.kevinkossowan.com/ Kevin

    I found his comment about listening rather than talking a wise one.

  • http://mrandmrshalpern.blogspot.com Mike

    Seems like a pretty cool place. We have a dairy here in Washington that sells non-homognized milk with very low pasteurization so that the milk is almost just as it came straight from the cow. Very purest. The way g-d made it. We went for a tour once and these people truly cared for their animals. http://www.spokanefamilyfarm.com/content/home.php We wrote about it on our blog http://mrandmrshalpern.blogspot.com/2010/04/our-visit-to-dairy.html

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/morkthedelayer/ Adam

    What do they do with the buttermilk then? They could at least feed it to pigs or something.

    • Dillon Noble

      well most butter milk is condensed into a dry form and can be used for a wide number of things ice cream creamer powder hot coaco powder and the list can go on for a while.

  • http://www.facebook.com/dennis.ratcliff.75 Dennis Ratcliff

    50 years ago I worked in a creamery that churned butter. I enjoyed the work, because I thought it was special. The butter we produced was packaged in 64# boxes, 1/4# and 1# sizes. Sad to say the creamery is no longer in existence. I hope to make the 300 mile trip to Hope to purchase butter. It is worth the time and effort, as Hope butter is the best I have had.

  • Dillon

    When we where still running our dairy we sold our milk to hope and before hope to the Moland Creamery. That was before we went organic in 94 then we sold to Organinc Valley but we had to give the dairy up in 2006. We just couldn’t make a profit anymore and most small dairys are in the same boat there just are not enough creamerys left to dirve a competitive market. most dairy farmers haven’t had a price increase pre hundred wheight in 4 years.