Every ghee brand says "traditional. " Almost none of them will show you the actual process. We will.
Ask ten ghee brands what makes their process special and most will use the same three words: pure, traditional, authentic. Ask them to actually show you the process behind those words and most go quiet. That gap, between what a label claims and what a brand can prove, is exactly where this category has been losing buyer trust for years, and it is exactly what we built Brijka to close.
So here is the plain version, not the marketing version. Bilona ghee is made by turning milk into curd, churning that curd into butter using the bilona method, then slow-cooking the butter over low heat until it separates into ghee. Machine-made ghee usually skips the curd stage entirely, starting from cream or butter that is separated mechanically and heated in bulk. The difference is not a marketing detail. It changes how the ghee tastes, how it smells, and how long the whole process takes, and it is the difference we filmed start to finish rather than simply putting on a label.
What the Bilona Method Actually Involves
Bilona refers to the woodenor stone churner traditionally used to separate butter from curd. The process follows a fixed order, and none of the steps are optional if it is being done properly.
First, milk is set with a culture and left to become curd, usually overnight. This fermentation step is the part machine-made ghee skips completely, and it is also where a good amount of the flavor complexity comes from.
Second, the curd is churned, traditionally by the Bilona method, until butter separates from the buttermilk. Depending on the quantity, this can take a couple of hours of steady churning. There is no shortcut here that does not change the result.
Third, that butter is heated slowly, usually over a low flame, until the water content evaporates and the milk solids brown slightly at the bottom of the pan. What is left behind is clarified, golden ghee, along with a small amount of browned residue that gets strained out.
What Machine-Made Ghee Usually Skips
Most commercialghee,particularly atlower price points, is made directly from cream or butter using centrifugal separators. Cream goes in one end, ghee comes out the other, often within a fraction of the time bilona ghee takes.
This is not automatically a lesser product. It is faster, cheaper, and easier to keep consistent at scale. But it skips the curd-fermentation stage, and that stage does more than most people assume. Fermentation changes some of the milk fat structure and adds a mild acidity, which is part of what gives bilona ghee its more complex smell. Ghee made straight from cream tends to taste cleaner, but flatter.
Some large-scale producers use a variant called the creamery method, which separates cream from milk mechanically rather than churning it from curd, then clarifies that cream directly. This sits somewhere between full industrial separation and the traditional process, but it still skips the fermentation step that defines true bilona ghee.
Does It Actually Change the Taste and Aroma?
Yes, and this is the part anyone can notice without a lab. Bilona ghee usually carries a stronger, slightly tangy aroma from the fermentation step, along with a more grainy texture once it solidifies. Machine-made ghee tends to be smoother in texture and more neutral in smell.
Neither is the wrong choice for every situation. A neutral ghee works fine in a dish where you do not want the ghee itself to stand out. But if ghee is being used the way most Indian households use it, spooned onto dal, drizzled over a hot roti, stirred into rice, the aroma is often the entire point of adding it.
Does the Method Change Nutrition, or Just Process?
Ghee, regardless ofhow it is made, is almost entirely fat. Once milk becomes ghee, the protein and lactose content drop to trace amounts either way, and the nutritional profile does not shift dramatically between bilona and machine-made versions. The real differences are in taste, texture, aroma, and the amount of time and labor that went into making it, not in some hidden nutritional gap. Anyone claiming one method is dramatically more nutritious than the other is stretching a process difference into a health claim it cannot support.
Why Small Batches Take Longer, and Why That Is the Point
A commercial operation can run thousands of liters of cream through a centrifugal separator in roughly the time it takes to Bilona-churn a single batch of curd into butter. That is not an exaggeration. It is simply how the two methods scale.
Bilona ghee does not scale the same way, and that is exactly why it costs more per jar. The extra cost is not paying for a fancier raw ingredient. It is paying for a process that cannot be sped up without changing what comes out the other end. If a brand claims bilona method at a machine-made price, that math is worth questioning.
A Short History of Why This Method Exists At All
Bilona churning predates refrigeration, industrial dairies, and centrifugal separators by centuries. Before any Of that equipment existed, curdling milk and churning it using Bilona was simply the only way to extract butter from it, and slow-cooking that butter over a wood or coal fire was the only way to turn it into something shelf-stable in a hot climate without electricity.
What is worth noticing is that this was never chosen as the artisanal option. It was the default option, the way ghee was made everywhere, for a long time. Industrial separation is the newer, faster method that arrived once dairies needed to process far larger volumes than a household churn could ever manage. Calling bilona ghee traditional is accurate. Calling it a marketing invention is not.
Is Machine-Made Ghee Fake Ghee?
No,and it is worthsaying plainly. Machine-madeghee, when made from real cream or butter without added fillers, is still genuine ghee. The distinction between bilona and machine-made is a difference in process and resulting texture and aroma, not a difference between real and fake. Adulteration, where cheaper fats are blended in to cut cost, is a separate problem entirely, and it can happen to ghee made by either method. We cover how to check for that specific issue in a separate post on this blog.
The reason this distinction matters here is that some marketing around bilona ghee implies machine-made ghee is somehow lesser or impure, when the honest comparison is closer to Bilona-rolled pasta versus machine-extruded pasta. Both are pasta. They are simply made differently, and one takes a lot more time and skill to get right.
This is also why price alone should never be read as a purity signal in either direction. A cheap ghee is not automatically adulterated, and an expensive one is not automatically pure. Price mostly reflects process and scale. Purity is a separate question, answered by testing, not by the number on the label.
How to Tell Which One You Are Actually Buying
A few practical cues help here. Bilona ghee usually has visible grain or texture once cooled, rather than a perfectly smooth set. The aroma is usually noticeably stronger straight out of the jar, and it often carries a faint tang from the curd-fermentation step that machine-made ghee generally lacks. Color can be a rough signal too, since bilona ghee tends toward a deeper, more saturated gold, though this varies with the cow's diet and season as well, so it should never be read alone.
Price is a rough signal on top of all of this, since the labor difference is real and shows up on the shelf. A brand claiming a genuine bilona process at a price close to mass-market machine-made ghee is worth a second look. None of these cues are perfect tests by themselves, which is part of why a real lab report and a clear description of process matter more than a single word on the label.
How Brijka Makes Its Ghee
At Brijka, every batch starts as curd made from A2 Gir cow milk, churned using the bilona method, then simmered slowly until the ghee separates on its own. Nothing is added, and no step is shortened to save time. We have filmed the full process from curd to jar rather than just describing it, and our lab report is available for anyone who would rather check the result than take the claim at face value.
We also keep batches small on purpose. A smaller batch is easier to watch closely at every stage, from how long the curd ferments to how the butter behaves once it hits the flame, and that closer attention is a large part of what consistency in bilona ghee actually depends on. Rushing this process to increase batch size is the most common way brands quietly drift from the method they still put on the label.
None of this is a promise that our ghee is perfect every single time. It is a description of a process built to stay consistent, backed by a lab report anyone can check rather than a story that only sounds convincing. If you have spent this long reading about how bilona ghee is actually made, you already know more than most labels will ever tell you, which is exactly why we would rather you check ours than take our word for it. The jar, the footage, and the report are all one tap away.
