Butter of the Month: MINERVA DAIRY AMISH SEA SALT BUTTER

Unboring Rating – 2 cows out of 4 cows

Butter is having a moment.

High-fat diets like the Ketogenic Diet have earned legions of loyalists that swear by the diet’s ability to miraculously shed unwanted fat in a matter of weeks. As a result, butter consumption has steadily risen in the last few years.

It’s been a stunning reversal from the “Margarine Era” of the 1990s. There have been favorable shifts in consumer tastes and preferences that have helped butter gain its momentum: the war against trans fats and the real food movement. Now it seems like everyone is jumping on the butter bandwagon. A visit to your local national grocery store’s dairy aisle will reveal dozens of butters to choose from. It’s American capitalism at work.

But there is one butter among the group that’s been here since 1894.

Minerva Dairy began as Radloff Cheese in Hustisford, Wisconsin. Max P. Radloff, the founder, opted not to take over his family’s furniture business. Five generations later, Minerva Dairy proudly claims to be “America’s oldest family owned creamery.” Minerva Dairy makes Amish butter that comes packaged in a log roll format.  

Butter typically comes packaged in a bricks or sticks format, but there are occasional defectors. One such group is the log roll butters. Log roll butters differentiate themselves from their more traditionally packaged comrades by conveying a sense that the butter was packaged by hand (or rolled by hand to be more precise) on the same farmland where the cow’s cream was churned into butter. It’s an effective point of differentiation, but does it translate to better butter? And what does a “better butter” even mean?

At The Unboring Granola, we are obsessed with great butter. We only use Grade AA Butter (the USDA’s highest grade) for our Butter Baked Granola. From our viewpoint, we define a better butter as one that tastes and feels like what you love about butter. A butter that has a golden yellow color. A butter that perfumes the room with that intoxicating “movie theater popcorn” aroma when melted. A butter that has that rich silky creamy mouth-feel. We were very excited to try Minerva Dairy’s Amish butter especially because this butter contains 85% butterfat!

Minerva Dairy still sells its Amish butter in a log roll, but the butter we evaluated came in a sticks format (which is more baking friendly because it’s easier to measure for recipes). This butter was one of the more perplexing butters that we tasted. In fact, the butter was so puzzling to evaluate that writing this month’s blog presented quite a challenge.

What made the butter so baffling? First, the butter has 85% butterfat which usually translates to awesomeness (especially when it comes to butter). Somehow, inexplicably, that awesomeness is absent. Does the butter have a strange taste or texture? No, the butter is not offensive or unpleasant in taste or texture. The salt content is muted which doesn’t help its case as a salted butter. The color of the butter is noticeably pale in comparison to other 85% butterfat butters. However, the texture of this butter is noticeably denser than other 85% butterfat butters (which is great for baking applications where you want a really flaky buttery crust or texture). Eventually, we had to go back to that definition of what makes a better butter to help us with our narrative for this month’s blog. We always strive for a narrative that is fair, honest, and accurate to the butter we are reviewing.

We landed on this: The concept of Amish Butter is kind of fascinating.

One could argue that Amish + Butter is the ultimate oxymoron. What could be more indulgent and gratuitous than butter? Isn’t indulgence the very antithesis of the Amish ethos? And, yet, one could argue that Amish Butter is the perfect union between an ingredient admired for its purity and simplicity and a culture admired for its commitment to tradition and craftsmanship.

Therein lies the challenge with Minerva Dairy’s Amish Butter. This is a shy and understated butter despite possessing 85% butterfat! It lacks the sizzle and naughtiness that we love about butter. In the case of Minerva Butter, the Amish butter-making process has succeeded in stripping butter of all its sinfulness. From a technical standpoint, this is butter. From a visceral standpoint, this is not butter.

It makes sense when you consider the ideals and standards of the Amish culture which prioritizes the welfare of the community above the welfare of the individual. Both are important. But community supersedes self. The Amish de-emphasize the importance of self in an effort to ward off humanity’s more selfish impulses and tendencies. The Amish community is a very close-knit one operating like its own sustainable ecosystem. In order for that ecosystem to survive and to function properly, each individual member has to suppress their own individual desires for the common good. It’s logical to assume that the very things that make each person unique are also suppressed because focus on the self can only serve to distract from focus on the community. This suppression extends to the butter making process. Simply put: Minerva Dairy’s Amish Sea Salt Butter lacks the unique (and devilish) virtues of butter that make butter “butter”.

We’d recommend this butter as a good substitute for baking applications where lard or shortening apply, but not for baking applications where a dairy-forward butter flavor is needed. For this reason, we have to award Minerva Dairy’s Amish Sea Salt Butter with a two cow rating.

Key Takeaway

Like Butter, Self-Awareness is having a moment too.

In an age of Identity Politics and Woke Culture, one could make the case that self-awareness has never been stronger. Social Media created a whole profession built around individual self-proclaimed tastemakers (ie Influencers) and user-generated content “Media Queens & Kings” (ie YouTube Stars). All these different individual voices clashing on television and on the internet testing the boundaries of free speech—these voices amplified more and more with every new follower. One gets the sense that the early Amish settlers understood this innate tension between one's self needs and the community's needs as well as the struggles between change and tradition. There's a place in society for positive change and for tradition.

We feel the same way when it comes to butter. With respect to tradition, we prefer butter over oil. With respect to positive change, we embrace butter for being butter!

Maybe this is what separates the American ideal from the Amish one: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of (Self) Happiness via the occasional consumption of a sinful butter.”

We do not receive any form of compensation for our reviews by any of the butter brands we feature. The views expressed in our blog are solely based on our own opinions.