Yogurt with a yogurt maker

So I finally caved and bought a yogurt maker. Total it was $42. I have made 2 batches and so far it is MUCH easier and produces much thicker yogurt than I was able to make by manually regulating the temp. I used the same recipe as before with 5 cups whole milk, 1/2 cup powdered milk, and about 6 oz of yogurt with live cultures.
This time I microwaved the milk for 10 minutes.

10 minutes proved to be a little bit too long and it ended up boiling a little and getting a little bit of "skin" on the top.

I put this in the fridge with my thermometer in it and waited ~30 minutes until it was 120 degrees.

Once this was at the right temp I mixed in the 6oz yogurt and then poured them into the cups that came with the yogurt maker and put them in it. I set the timer for 8 hours and walked away and did something else for the day. 

The final result was by far the best yet. It had the least milky taste and was by far the thickest. This is a picture of it upside down showing how thick it is. 

I just started another batch today. This time I heated it up on the stove and cooled it in a cold water bath. I also did not use any powdered milk. It took about 45 minutes to get it from scratch to the yogurt maker. I left it in the maker and then headed to work so I will report back on how it came out later. I found that the cold water bath took only about 5 minutes to cool from 180 degrees to 120 degrees.