Colourants - General

General
Colourant Categories
Amount To Add
How To Add
When To Add
Availability
Safety

General

Milk is naturally white and most cheese making (except blue cheese) does not significantly change the colour and thus without colourants most cheese would be white.

Thus to distinguish cheeses, non-flavouring colourants have historically been added. Popular are orange coloured Cheddar and red coloured Leicester commonly through the addition of Annatto, the most popular colourant in cheese making.

Colouring is so ingrained in consumers minds that it can affect their perception and appreciation of cheese and as it is normally non-flavouring, mostly psychological. For example, some people will not buy or eat white cheddar.

Colourant Categories

Colourants for cheese can be divided into three categories:

Colourants From Flavourings

Chilies.
Herbs.
Wine washed rinds.

Colourants From Natural Food Dyes

Green: Chlorophyll.
Yellow: Turmeric, Lutein.
Orange: Annatto, Cochineal.
Red: Carmine.
Pink: Anthocyanin, Beet Red.
Brown: Caramel, Malt.
Black: Carbo.

Colourants From Artificial Food Dyes

Common in cake and cookie/biscuit making.

Amount To Add

Amount to add is dependant on effect wanted and type and concentration of colourant, adjust as necessary.

How To Add

Food dyes are normally very concentrated and thus adding it directly to milk will result in generally unwanted pockets of colour. Therefore, pre-dilute your colourant in ~20 ml cool water per liter of milk/~0.25 cup cool water per one US gallon, then trickle into milk while stirring to distribute evenly.

When To Add

Many food dyes including Annatto, can retard rennet's effectiveness. To minimize this, natural and artificial food dyes are normally added to the milk rather than being added to the rennet before adding to the milk.

Note, a common step after adding food colouring is adding rennet, do not use the same container to pre-dilute rennet in as it can reduce the rennet's strength.

Availability

Cooking food dyes in grocery stores.
Annatto seeds in some grocery stores such as Latin grocery stores.
Cheese making aqueous Annatto from Cheese Making Supply Stores

Safety

Food colourants are normally very concentrated and can easily stain almost anything. Thus best safety practices are:

Store in a secondary external container or zip loc type plastic bag.
When using, wear disposable (i.e. latex) gloves.
When pre-diluting, use non-stainable container such as glass or china.


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