Best Practice: Milk Additives

General
Best Practices
Tricks
Traps

General

Depending on the cheese making recipe and type of milk used, none to several additives are added to the milk at the start of the cheese making process. Typical milk additives are:

Milk Enricher(s) such as creams or milk powder.
Starter Culture(s) to ripen the milk by creating lactic acid and aid in coagulation.
Calcium Chloride to aid in rennet coagulation if using store bought pasteurized milk.
Lipase as a flavouring.
Colourants to alter change the cheeses colour from default white.
Rennet as a coagulant.

These additives are normally very concentrated, sometimes interactive, and part of the key to making good quality cheese.

Best Practices

Before adding additives, ensure milk is at the temperature required in the recipe.
Add the additives in the optimal order as required in the recipe. In general from first to last:

Milk Enrichers are first and before the Starter Culture as gives more ingredients for the Starter Culture to work on.
Starter Culture(s)
Calcium Chloride
Colourant(s), added before rennet as it can destroy the rennet’s coagulation of the milk.
Lipase
Rennet

To be fair I have found no good rational for the order of the middle three above other than after ripening and before renneting (where recipe calls for it).

As these additives are highly concentrated, amounts need to be measured accurately. This is difficult for small scale home cheese making where measuring tiny amount. A set of small measuring ??? for liquids and a mini scale for solids is recommended.
For Direct Vat Set (DVS) freeze dried powdered Starter Culture, sprinkle directly on to the milk and then stir in with a whisk to full depth of vat/stockpot for 1 minute to ensure optimal dilution/distribution. Note, i) whisk reasonably, ie do not foam milk, and ii) after mixing in, do not stir during ripening period as excessive aeration can reduce the rate of acid production resulting in longer ripening times required to get to the correct pH before renneting.
For Prepared Starter Culture, trickle the required amount in to the milk while stirring with a whisk, stir to full depth of vat/stockpot for 1 minute to ensure optimal dilution/distribution. Note, i) whisk reasonably, ie do not foam milk, and ii) do not stir during ripening period as excessive aeration can reduce the rate of acid production resulting in longer ripening times required to get to the correct pH before renneting.
For Calcium Chloride, dissolve/mix thoroughly in ~50 ml/~0.25 cup of un/low chlorinated cool water* per 3 litre/1 US gallon of milk. Then trickle in to milk while stirring with a whisk to full depth of vat/stockpot for 1 minute to ensure optimal dilution/distribution. Again, whisk reasonably, ie do not foam milk.
For Lipase, same as for Calcium Chloride but allow to rest for 20 minutes before adding diluted mixture to milk.
For Colourants, same as for Calcium Chloride, unless of course you want a streaky curd in which case stir less. Note, as stated above, some colorants will degrade rennets’ effect, thus ensure your dilution container is cleaned before using it to dilute rennet.
For Rennet, same as for Starter Culture, but if using rennet tablets, place in water for ¾ hour before use to ensure fully dissolved.

Tricks

For new cheese makers, use sterilized water when diluting additives to rule out contamination at this step when troubleshooting any problem with your final cheese product.

Traps

The most common, is not achieving full dilution of the additives, resulting in poor cheese making products.


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Best Practice: Milk Additives

General

Best Practices

Tricks

Traps