Narrator: We're here in West Iceland,
and we're gonna go and visit
a creamery making traditional skyr.
Now, skyr is an Icelandic yogurt cheese,
and it's so unusual that it's not even really a cheese.
So let's go and find out how it's made.
Sharing his skyr knowledge with me
is Þorgrímur Einar Guðbjartsson.
His creamery was first devoted to making ice cream,
but he later started to make skyr with the leftover milk
as a fun way to preserve it.
Þorgrímur Einar Guðbjartsson: Why do we make skyr
in Iceland? Basically,
it was to store the milk
after you have taken the cream off
to make it into butter.
Butter was the currency,
and butter is only maybe 3% of the milk quantity.
So you have 97% skimmed milk left.
That's a lot. You have to store it somehow.
Preserving, making food, it's in my genes.
My ancestors are farmers.
And it gives you really good fulfill at the end
when you see the storage.
I have enough for the winter.
I can provide my family, my kids, myself with everything.
Ju: Einar makes skyr once a week all year round
and more often in the summer.
He starts the process by separating
the milk from its cream and then pasteurizing it.
Einar: Pasteurization temperature is about
63 to 72 degrees Celsius,
but we need the milk to be
around 50 degrees when we separate it.
Otherwise it has influence on the texture of the cream.
If it's too low, for example, you will have less cream,
and if it's too high, you will also have less cream,
as the fat molecules,
they will sort of go on a big party in the heat.
So they don't know what to do.
The fat is lighter in weight than the milk.
So what happens in here is that
we have a spinning rotator in there.
Centrifugal separator, which goes very fast.
And by spinning the milk like this,
it will throw out the fat molecules.
Ju: Right.
Einar: They will go "pff."
And the main source of the milk, which is water,
will remain in there
and go out the other way as skimmed milk.
Ju: Yeah.
Einar: Into a tank.
The cream we get out of the machine
is about 53%
to 56% cream,
so it's a little bit heavier than normal cream
you have in the buckets today
for your pudding or whatever.
The cream we then take into the cellar
and store it until we make ice cream.
This is usually one of the moments
I enjoy myself in the creamery. It's because I like cream.
Ju: Oh, right, you like cream, yeah. [both laugh]
It looks very perfect coming out.
Einar: Smooth and nice.
Ju: The whole process of making skyr, how long does it take?
Einar: It takes about 24 to 30 hours.
Ju: 30 hours?
Wow, OK.
Einar: Phase one.
Ju: Done, yeah.
The skimmed milk then cools down
at 40 degrees for half an hour.
Einar: I have here
skyr from last week,
leftover, which I use as a starter
every time I make a new batch.
So I will just pour it in here.
And then we stir it.
[whisking]
Ju: And how long will you leave that for now?
Einar: Now it will sit for maybe
four, five, six hours.
I will come here after four hours
and have a look at the coagulate.
So, as soon as the whey starts to come out of the product,
it's ready to cool down and start the next process.
And now we just have to wait until
1 o'clock in the morning.
Ju: Yeah.
Einar: And I'll see you then.
Ju: Because there's 23 hours of sunlight,
you just don't sleep in the summer then?
Einar: I avoid sleeping in the summertime as much as I can.
I really enjoy, for example, at 1 o'clock last night,
I went outside here with my cup of coffee.
There was no wind, there was not a sound from the birds,
as the birds had already fallen asleep,
so I was just sitting out there.
You realize, you know, what life is supposed to be like.
You're supposed to be enjoying the nature.
Ju: After fermenting, the milk needs to be cooled down
to 20 degrees to stop the fermentation,
and then it's stirred for three or four hours
to get a smoother texture.
The following morning, the milk is poured
in these linen bags,
which allow the whey to slowly drain out.
[liquid flowing]
[splashing]
Einar: You can see it's already floating in the whey.
You see it's draining out.
The main thing we used the skyr whey for
in the past was to preserve food.
You boil the food,
and then you store it in the barrel with whey.
The consistency of the product at the moment is
the same as yogurt.
So you -- and the phase, making yogurt and skyr
is the same until we take it out into the bags.
Ju: And then it changes after that.
It becomes something different.
Einar: Yeah.
The bacterias are different from the start.
Ju: So that's when it stops being yogurt
and starts being skyr.
Einar: Yeah.
It becomes a cheese.
Ju: It's like a sack of jelly.
Yeah, that is, I just kind of wanna lay down in there.
[laughs] It's quite satisfying.
It's like a nice, really soft, wobbly pillow, yeah.
Einar: This is what I will need next week
or when I produce skyr next time.
And now you can see the consistency
of the milk, you know.
You see how smooth it is?
We want it to be like silk.
You can also see the small particles.
Ju: Oh, yeah, you can see them in there.
Einar: It looks like you have poured sugar or salt over it.
All this will be gone when those small items
have joined together successfully
into what we call skyr.
Ju: The skyr in the bags can take
10 to 20 hours to fully drain out.
A bag that previously weighed 20 kilos
would now weigh just 5.
Einar: As you remember, yesterday,
when we put the coagulated milk in here,
it was a full bag with smooth surface,
and you wanted to sleep on it.
But now you don't want to sleep on it.
All the liquid is gone,
and this is the dry stuff we have remaining.
Ju: Wow, it's like a clay, yeah.
Einar: It is.
And this is exactly what we want it to look like.
We want it to be flexible like this.
It's still smooth enough so it will float around,
it's not gonna stay as a block.
If I would have it sit for maybe
four, five hours more in the bag,
it might be more like a block,
and then it would be more difficult
to put it in the packaging,
and you would also need to add more liquid to it
when you mix it up for consuming.
This is the final product.
You can just take it as it is now and eat it.
You can also add something to it,
if you want, for flavoring.
For example, if you have some,
what's your favorite taste in fruit?
Ju: I like lemon, like a lemon sorbet kind of taste.
Einar: You could add lemon to it,
and then you would have lemon-tasting skyr.
This is the final product, ready for consuming.
And I'm gonna give you a little taste of it.
Ju: Yeah, nice.
Einar: I can hear that you are hungry.
[Ju laughs]
And this is a rhubarb syrup we make from our own harvest.
And even though skyr is sour and rhubarb is sour,
but when you make the syrup, you add some sugar to it.
So with this together, it will be really tasty.
But before we add to it, you taste it.
Ju: Mm!
Yeah, it actually tastes really yogurty.
It's just a nice, thick, creamy yogurt.
Einar: But there is no cream in it; it's skimmed milk.
Ju: Yeah, I know. Just, yeah.
Einar: It's so funny, people always talk about
how creamy skyr is, but it's...
there is no cream in it.
Ju: Yeah.
Einar: OK, have a little bit more.
Ju: Mm. I'm being spoon-fed skyr.
Einar: I'm gonna add this on top.
Ju: Mm.
Einar: And now you're gonna have
something really enjoyable.
Ju: Mm!
That's great.
That's really, really nice. Mm.
That's super sweet.
Einar: We have a saying.
"Þeir sletta skyrinu sem eiga það."
Ju: OK, I'm not gonna even try and attempt to say that.
[both laugh]
Einar: It means literally,
"Those who have the ability of doing something,
they do it."
For example, I can make skyr, so I do it.
And I do it literally,
and I try to do it as good as I possibly can.