About Our Butter Keepers

Butter is pressed into the upper part (the “lid”); a little water goes into the lower part.
When closed, the butter sits “upside down” and is sealed off from air by the water underneath. This keeps its flavour and it hardly loses any quality.

It can be kept at room temperature, but it can also go in the refrigerator. Where you place the dish depends on how firm you want the butter to be. All options are open to you!

If you care about the taste of butter, you will use this dish in any case—because even in the refrigerator, butter exposed to air immediately begins to turn slightly yellow and develops the corresponding flavour.

We enjoy this dish every single day!

The water seal stops oxygen from reaching the butter, so it cannot oxidise—i.e. it cannot turn rancid.

To prevent a common misunderstanding: this container has nothing to do with cooling.

In fact, for keeping butter, sealing it off from air is more important than refrigeration.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes—knives, scouring pads or similar will not scratch this glaze.

We offer the water-seal butter keeper in two sizes:

1. The regular size fits a 250 g piece of butter.

2. The small water-seal butter keeper fits half a piece, i.e. 125 g.

An elegant method is to let the butter soften at room temperature for five to ten minutes and then cut it into four pieces. Using a tablespoon, you can press the first piece in so that the corners are completely filled. Do the same with the other pieces, smooth it over—done!

If the butter is pressed in as described above, it stays in place first because of the conical shape of the dish and second because it adheres.

It won’t fall out when the dish is full, half full or one third full. It can happen when only a small corner is left. But that doesn’t have to be a problem, because the function is still maintained.

At least enough for the water to reach the lower edge of the butter part—1 cm is enough. That creates the air seal.

At most, only enough so that it does not overflow.

With daily use, we recommend changing it at least twice a week.

If germs get into the water via bread crumbs or jam, mould is still rare, but not impossible. This can be prevented by adding salt (1–3 teaspoons) to the water. Then it is sufficient to change the water at longer intervals.

Most of our customers do not use salt and have no problems.

Yes—at a normal room temperature of around 20°C anyway; about 25°C is still fine. If the room is significantly warmer, the dish should be placed in cooling at least temporarily.

There really are very different opinions on this, because different people have very different taste sensitivity—and butter doesn’t suddenly “go bad”; it changes gradually.
In fact, it begins to turn rancid from the first day onward, which sooner or later becomes noticeable in taste and also visually as a darker layer.

The differences in the following list between a regular butter dish and a water-seal butter keeper arise because the water seal prevents oxidation, i.e. rancidity.

Here are some guideline storage times for different butter keepers and storage methods.

1. For sensitive taste buds (a stricter standard):

a. Butter in a regular, not airtight butter keeper in the refrigerator: 3–4 days

b. Butter in a water-seal butter keeper in the refrigerator: 2–3 weeks

c. Butter in a water-seal butter keeper at room temperature (20–25°C): 1–2 weeks

2. Still enjoyable with a less sensitive standard:

a. Butter in a regular, not airtight butter keeper in the refrigerator: 1–2 weeks

b. Butter in a water-seal butter keeper in the refrigerator: 4–5 weeks

c. Butter in a water-seal butter keeper at room temperature (20–25°C): 3–4 weeks

It’s best to try it out yourself. Rancid butter is easy to recognise by taste, smell and colour.

If germs get into the water via bread crumbs or jam, the usable storage time may be shortened. This can be prevented by changing the water about every other day, or alternatively by adding salt (1–3 teaspoons).

It largely beads off; perhaps a few drops remain. But they don’t have to be a problem.

Yes—because both stay fresh just as well as butter thanks to the air seal.

First, we would like to ask in return whether you are familiar with the functional principle of this dish. If you know that it is solely about sealing off air, the following answer makes sense:

After weighing the pros and cons, we decided to offer our water-seal butter keepers only without holes.

The benefit—or function—of holes would be that when only a little butter remains in the vessel, water could enter through the holes and thus keep the remaining air space small.

By the way, the same benefit could be achieved if the dish is closed while being held at an angle.

In any case, this supposed benefit is small, because it is less the remaining air and more the incoming fresh air that causes butter to oxidise.

The disadvantage of such openings is that the dish would always have to be filled to the brim with water so that the water level is above the highest holes. Due to the displacement by the butter part, filling it would be so inconvenient that hardly anyone would want to handle it that way.

If the butter were exposed to air through holes, the entire dish would lose its function.

So the decision against holes was very clear!

Absolutely. And because “food-safe” is not enough for us, we not only comply with the permitted limit values, we also guarantee that our interior and exterior glazes are completely free of lead, barium and strontium compounds.

They consist of rocks such as talc, feldspar and limestone, as well as clays, minerals and natural colour oxides.

This question is largely answered once you familiarise yourself with the functional principle of this dish—see above. So it is not necessary.

One could ask whether additional cooling through evaporation would be useful.
For that, the lower part would have to be made from porous ceramic. The upper part would have to be densely fired so that no oxygen can reach the butter.

Even in a warm room (25°C, 50% r.h.) with airflow, this would only achieve a temperature reduction of 2°C. The effect is so small that it is far outweighed by the disadvantages:

Porous ceramic is extremely fragile. Water constantly seeps through, making an additional bowl necessary. There are easily hygiene problems and it is not dishwasher-safe.

At these temperatures butter already becomes liquid, so it is too warm. We suggest digging a small hole in the ground, placing the dish in it, and insulating it from above with a cover. Combined with a water-seal butter keeper, this works perfectly!

That is due to the manufacturing process: it is fired upside down, the glaze becomes liquid in the kiln and therefore has to be removed from the contact area.

Since our ceramic is dense even without glaze and therefore does not absorb anything, there are no disadvantages.

We are professional potters and throw them freehand on the wheel. Here you can see some photos of the throwing process We mix our glazes from ground clay, limestone and feldspar and fire the water-seal butter keeper at just under 1300°C.

You can see the energy and vitality of the making process in every unique piece!
By the way: thanks to our photovoltaic system, the firing is largely CO₂-neutral.

The coating is called glaze, because it really is glass.

Cakes can have “glaze” too—chocolate glaze and lemon glaze. In that case it’s just called that; it isn’t glass. 🙂

Our glazes are technically very demanding; they are matte and react very lively during firing. They are the result of years of silicate-ceramic experiments.

Let’s take a look at our green-blue one. It forms three different colours—green, blue and black—yet it never settles on an in-between tone. This reaction is what makes this glaze so exciting.

The yellow-brown and blue-shaded show a similar phenomenon. The former creates a play of light brown, ochre, reddish and darker brown tones. The blues of the latter range between grey-blue, purple and darker areas.

We are often asked what exactly “black-anthracite” is. We would describe it as a relatively dark, neutral anthracite. Some customers also see blue or green in it, and even red occurs.

White-sand is a warm white that lets the clay underneath show through slightly in places. At edges, corners, etc. it shifts into a light reddish-brown. In this contrast, the white comes into its own.

We like to allow firing runs in green-blue, blue-shaded and white-sand; less so in yellow-brown and black-anthracite.

There is no colour application whose lightfastness even comes close to that of high-fired glazes.

Our glazes will not fade for the next thousand years.
Shall we bet? 🙂

That’s a design question. We find it more appealing to leave a little of the clay visible rather than covering it completely.

We like to show the making process!

But of course it’s all a matter of taste. Perhaps you’d like to get used to these dishes that way?

The two parts are matched to each other in diameter. With the intact piece, we can try in the workshop to find the matching counterpart, which usually works—but unfortunately not always.
If you have an opportunity to send us the part, we’ll gladly try. If not, it would be simpler to send a complete dish.

Please take a look in our shop, visit us at one of the pottery markets in southern Germany, or come to our workshop in Adelsried!