How long can seperated milk stay out on the counter?

[Thystle]

So I left a half gallon jar of raw milk out on the counter to make cream cheese. I took like 8 days to seperate and it seperated two days ago... I still have not drained it or put it in the fridge.



Still good to go I assume?

[Tcarwyn]

probably fine, unless it smells "wrong" and has mold or something...

Tanya

[425lisamarie]

I do the sniff and taste test

[mootopian]

I wonder why you didn't separate the cream in the fridge?? And did you add a commercial culture to the milk or just let whatever wild bacteria were present do the fermenting? It seems strange that the cream took so long to rise...were you using milk from goats or Ayrshire cows (which is naturally rather homogenized)? Sounds like you may not have retained enough control of the process to make good cheese (it tends to be a task best suited to the obsessive compulsive), but who knows? The "sniff and taste" method isn't all that bad. For safety's sake, I'd avoid feeding it to anyone who might be immunologically fragile, at least until the non-fragile folks have already eaten some and not reacted to it for 24 hours. Best of luck!

[~*~MamaJava~*~]

mootopian, i think her milk just separated into cheese and whey, probably...cream would have risen in a day or so....

i think it's fine. i just did this, and mine was separated for a day or so. sniff and taste. 8 days, though, wow, that's long...but if the milk was super fresh maybe...