HOPE CREAMERY | “The Best Butter I’ve Ever Tasted”
Did you know it takes about 21 pounds of milk to make one pound of butter? And that butter has been made the same way for 1000’s of years? We’ve been making incredible HOPE BUTTER for more than 100 years! If you are interested in a group tour, call the owner, Victor Mrotz, at 507-676-5129.
In a nutshell – there has been a creamery in the current building since 1919. It has changed hands over time, but the main goal has always been to make butter. In by-gone days they also have separated the milk from the cream and sold buttermilk. Another constant for the past 50 years has been the buttermaker Eugene (Gene) Kruckeberg. For the past 10 years he has been joined by buttermaker Jay Logan–together they make a winning butter making team!
You start with fresh milk, separate the cream, then churn the cream until the fats separate from the liquid and the solids form.
While the process of making butter is still the same the tools vary–from small churns made from stoneware, wood, metal or glass to huge industrial automated continuous flow churns. Our churn is somewhere in the middle, we use a small batch aluminum barrel churn that is operated and monitored by our butter makers.
To see more butter churns, more than you knew existed, and some other cool butter/dairy items check out Dairy Antiques.
About Our Milk
Although we don’t have our own herd of dairy cows we do get all of our cream (the ingredient in butter) from local Minnesota creameries. We pick up the cream in our bulk trucks from Plainview Creamery, where all the milk is from local farmers and is rBST/rBGH free.
“This is, swear on a stack of Bibles, the best butter I have ever eaten. I swoon when I put this butter on homemade bread. Seriously. I swoon.”
~Teresa
