I am making cheese with a cream-top milk.  What looks like butter is floating on top of the whey (curds sank like they are supposed to).  What should I do with it?

First, welcome aboard.  I’m assuming that by “cream top” milk you mean raw unpasteurized milk.  Can you give a further description of what you’re seeing?  Is it an oily sheen, or the appearance of a layer of cream; or is it literally small bits of greasy solids as would be the case with butter?  Is this during the cook phase; and if so, how far along before you notice this?  Has this happened more than once?

The milk is pastureized, but not homoginized.  When you open the bottle of milk, there is a lovely butter-like stuff at the mouth of the bottle.  I put it into the pot with the milk.  With three gallons of milk, it summed up to maybe half a cup to a cup of globs floating around on the top of the milk through-out the process. 

I posted last night in the midst of stirring the curds at about 86F.  The next step was bringing the curds up to 104F.  During this step, the “butter” melted.  It looks like it mostly ended up being poured off with the whey, as the bottles of whey I have sitting on the counter are now “cream top” bottles of whey!

I guess now my question is;  if I were using this same milk, and the temperature stayed low enough to keep the butter solid, should I attempt to mix them in with the curds?  Or should I pull them off?  I imagine going through the whole process with the extra fat and oils in there would add to the cheese in some way.  If not, I could just pull the buttery stuff off early and make a yummy treat out of it.

The manchego recipe I followed with this milk seemed to come out great, by the way.  It is brining now….

Thanks for the response!

If u can, take a picture of the surface, it helps allot.
Repeat the recipe and see if u get the same result, maybe its the milk batch u bought.
Also maybe use a whisk and mix up the milk so the Cream is mixed in well and not “Top Cream”

it is normal, u need to stir well after adding rennet for couple of minutes or so, this will keep the cream mixed in, and yes it is normal to find layer of cream on the curds before u cut