Homemade Yogurt Experiment

I read on the internet the other day something about making yogurt at home. Since we have an abundance of free milk here at the ranch, I decided I would give it a try and I was surprisingly successful! It seemed a little intimidating as I was reading all of the directions, but it wasn't too bad. Basically you heat milk to 185 degrees, then you cool it down to 110, at which time you add some store bought yogurt for the live cultures and some nonfat dry milk to help it thicken. You pour it into your containers and then you have to keep it at 110 degrees for 4-6 hours. I put the containers in a cooler with water heated to 110 and just left it there when went over to a friend's house for a few hours. I checked it when we got back and added some more hot water, left it a few more hours and in 5 hours we had homemade plain yogurt. I wish I would have sweetened half of it with honey or something while it was still hot. I think that would have worked better than trying to sweeten the individual servings as you eat it. So far we've just used it in smoothies and flavored it with vanilla and had it with fruit. I'm hoping to try using it as a substitute for sour cream in some recipes and maybe using it as a dip with some seasonings in it. John is making fun of me by claiming that I am becoming Amish, but I thought it was fun.