Small Batch,

Old World,

Yogurt Products

Handmade, hand-strained, hand packed.

Born of live cultures, farm fresh milk and endless patience.

Our Products

A distinctly decadent yogurt. Born of live culture, farm fresh milk and endless patience.

Available in Greek, Sour Cherry, Dates, Walnut & Honey and Seasonal flavors.

Our same yogurt recipe but strained longer for a thicker, shareable dip.
Available in Plain, Shankleesh and Kurdish flavors.
A thirst-quenching elixir of pure yogurt whey. Quench your thirst for health.
Available in plain, ginger, honey lime, passionfruit and pineapple flavor.
Probiotic whey pops infused with luscious fresh fruit.
Available in Tropical, Melon and Traditional Probiotic Pop packs.

Our Process

The Cow

It all begins with the cow, so we use the milk from cows raised in suitable and more traditional agricultural environments. We get our milk from Hudson Valley Fresh, a co-op of family farms dedicated to maintaining both healthy cows and the natural agricultural landscape of the region.

The Milk

The most important ingredient for yogurt making – we honor every drop of this sacred animal’s mother’s milk – from the solids to the whey.

The Yogurt

Handmade, hand-strained and hand-packed with nothing but pure milk and probiotics. Our labor intensive yogurt is made using ancient Persian techniques that we work hard to keep alive. The result is a simple and decadent yogurt.

The Whey

The magic elixir that results from our meticulous straining process. Every drop of yogurt whey is full of calcium, probiotics and vitamins. An excellent whey to hydrate and refresh, we have committed to an entire line of Probiotic Tonics and delightful frozen pops.

Press

Vogue
"The creamiest and most delicious yogurt I can find in New York City (and maybe in the entire country) is called the White Moustache… it is one of the best things I’ve tasted in quite a while — thick and smooth and glossy, and with an aroma that I feel relatively certain is what Heaven smells like.”
Huffington Post
"Our reactions were wide-eyed, gushing and full of awe at the contradictions produced by each taste: thick but creamy; light but substantial, an otherworldly combination of sweet and tart and tangy.”
New York Times
"The local yogurt makers White Moustache produce a whey that has found a home at Smith Canteen, in Carroll Gardens, in a drink flavored with cucumber, ginger and mint."
Edible Brooklyn
"White Moustache yogurt is decadent; it is thick, creamy, silky, lightly tangy… overwhelming in the best way."
Bon Appetit
"Whey is often seen as a byproduct en route to yogurt-y goodness, but some yogurt makers and chefs are experimenting with ways to get consumers to eat and enjoy it in its own right."
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FAQ

Thank you so much for your interest! Please visit us here to introduce yourself and we’ll follow up shortly. We look forward to working with you.

All our yogurt products begin with whole milk from Hudson Valley Fresh, a dairy farmer cooperative dedicated to sustainable agriculture and to preserving the dairy farming tradition and beauty of New York’s Hudson River Valley.

Learn more about Hudson Valley Fresh.

Nutrition information for a hand-made small batch product is tricky because the product is different from batch to batch, season to season. For example, we have noticed that milk can change over seasons – summertime milk is richer and fattier than wintertime milk – and the nutritional value varies as well.

We have applied for a nutritional label exemption that the FDA allows for small batch product like ours.

That said, we would like to be transparent with our process and give you the information so you can make the most informed choice.

We only use whole milk and probiotic cultures to make our yogurt — that’s it! We do not add any cream or starches or sugars. Our milk is pure whole milk sourced from a Hudson Valley co-op of family farmers (Hudson Valley Fresh). There is about 10-12oz of milk that goes into making one jar of 8oz yogurt.

We have done extensive experiments with the probiotics and the incubation temperatures to make the yogurt naturally thick. Each batch is handmade and the straining process is all determined by a skilled yogurt maker.

The fruit on the bottom yogurts are also difficult to pinpoint.  When we pour the Sour Cherry and the Mulberries in by hand, some jars will have one or two more cherries than others. There is a little over one ounce of fruit preserves in each jar. The ingredients for the fruit preserves are listed on each jar.

This should give you a good idea of what you are eating–true whole ingredients.

You can view more specific nutrition information for our yogurts here.

There are about 10-12 ounces of milk that go into making one 8oz jar of plain yogurt. This translates to approximately 170 – 180 calories and the general nutritional equivalent of what you would find in a 10-12 ounce glass of whole milk. Please keep in mind that summertime milk and wintertime milk will be different fat contents depending on the cow and the co-op farm it comes from.

For our flavored yogurts, there is approximately  one ounce of preserves per jar. These preserves are made with evaporated cane sugar (it’s what preserves the fruit) and add another 50-70 calories to your jar.

One exception to this is our date yogurt which does not use additional sugar at all.

Our plain yogurt (Greek and Persian) do not contain any sugar.

You can view more specific nutrition information for our yogurts here.

Every now and then, we get an email that lets us know that the yogurt you bought is less than perfect. Being the control freaks that we are, we have identified pretty much every step in which the yogurt may have gone off.

But your feedback is invaluable. And we do not put so many days worth of work and patience into the jar that you take home for it to be anything less than perfection.

Please do write in to us should any jar taste even remotely funny; we take a great deal of pride in our work and welcome the opportunity to make the experience right for you.

We use 100 percent Hudson Valley Fresh milk, which is certified by KOF-K Kosher Supervision. However, our production facilities are not certified kosher at this time.

When we strain our beloved yogurt as we do, we are left with a natural extract called “whey”. This whey is almost neon green in color, it’s THAT pure — there isn’t a drop of cloudy milk solids in our whey, so, zero fat. 

And just like yogurt, it is chock full of probiotics and calcium. Now, back home, we used to clamour over this “yogurt water” for its hydrating gulps; but now we have quite a bit of it on our hands and people aren’t as familiar with it or what to do with it.

Our family just drinks it. Straight up; but we are Middle Eastern, we love the taste of tangy yogurt. What we didn’t realize are the myriad of uses folks are finding for the whey. We’re not chefs, but we are lucky enough to now be in a city where food is a religion. Some of the ideas that have blown us away:

  • Smoothies
  • Marinating meats
  • Aid in digestion (especially from our pregnant mammas)
  • Post-workout hydration (“Nature’s Gatorade”)

Since 2014 we have curbed our own capacity and have dedicated all our resources to find a market for this amazing ingredient before we scale up! We have made popsicles with it, tonics and even Thanksgiving brining kits with it. 

In addition to it being delicious, nutritious and multi-dimensional, finding a home for the whey is also the environmentally  responsible thing to do. As Jeffery Steingarten pointed out in his article in July 2014 VOGUE, yogurt whey can have a very serious environmental impact if disposed of incorrectly by releasing so many probiotics into the ecosystem. Now, we’re a tiny company — but we take this seriously. 

Ok, we take everything seriously, but we really believe in whey and will continue making some noise in letting you know about it.

We are in the process of working out a recycling program whereby we collect, sanitize and genuinely reuse the jars in a true recycling process. We just haven’t had the resources to get there quite yet.

In the meantime, we suggest using the jars as tumblers; to store spices, leftovers or freeze babyfood (leave plenty of headspace); or to use for arts and crafts like Amy Sedaris does in her segment with Stephen Colbert.

If your event is in the upcoming few days, it can’t hurt to ask but we most likely will not be able to meet that request. 

We make every jar to order (even for our larger customers like Whole Foods) and our yogurt making process takes a few days from start to finish. Simply, we do not keep any inventory to pull from and are currently at capacity.  This strict art of yogurtmaking sadly does not leave room for us to accommodate spontaneous yogurt celebrations.  

If your event is in the upcoming weeks, that’s a different story. Most of the time (although not all the time), we can schedule in special batches for your special day and will be happy to do so.  It thrills us to be part of our customers’ special occasions. 

 

 

We do not currently ship.

The few times we have done it – out of sheer zeal of not disappointing customers – we have gotten it all wrong. 

The glass would break, or the ice packs would melt or the ice packs would freeze the product or the fruit on the bottom would end up on the top in a messy soup. Still delicious, but not what was expected or up to our standards.  

All of this has a solution, obviously, but we are a very small team that doesn’t have the bandwidth to figure out the above right now so we think it best to focus on being the best we can in our local area.

 

 

We make our yogurt entirely by hand using high-quality, meticulously sourced ingredients in an unfathomably time- and labor-intensive process. Where most commercial yogurts are made within a matter of hours, White Moustache yogurt takes three days to make from milk to final product.

It takes a lot of finesse and skill to know when to culture milk, how long to strain each two-and-a-half gallon bowl. The cherries get put in the jars, one spoonful at a time. The honey and walnuts get measured per bowlful and get folded into the yogurt by hand.

We do not take for granted a single penny you spend on our yogurt and it is the reason we will stand behind every jar of yogurt sold.

Sorry. We do not have the capacity to do so at this time.

This is my dad. He has a big white moustache.

Our founder, Homa Dashtaki, published a book called Yogurt & Whey: Recipes of an Iranian Immigrant Life. The book begins in the small Iranian village where her family is from and navigates its way to southern California where they eventually settled. Along the way, Homa introduces the foundational foods she grew up on and then pivots to her take on using yogurt and whey to create “Western” dishes, drinks and desserts. Information about the book can be found at her web site.