Mesophilic Culture Recipe
Mesophilic Cultures are the most common in making cheese, more info is available here.
Many new hobby cheese makers use the following recipe until they graduate to store bought manufactured cultures.
Ingredients
- 0.5 liter/2 cups fresh store bought Cultured Buttermilk.
Directions
- Set the Buttermilk in it's container on kitchen counter with lid cracked to relieve pressure and allow to reach 21 C/70 F room temperature to ripen and increase the bacteria population density. After 6-8 hours the buttermilk should be much thicker like fresh yogurt and sourer than at start. If not thick enough, let sit for a few more hours.
- Use as per cheese making recips and pour remainder into a full sized very clean ice cube tray and put into your freezer.
- Once frozen, remove the cubes and put into a clean sealed labeled container or plastic freezer bag to reduce contamination and freezer burn.
- The resulting ice cubes are each ~30 ml/1 ounce of mesophilic starter. Add cubes (thawed) to your recipe as required.
Tricks & Traps
Tricks
- If using in first cheese making, ripen culture overnight so that can make first cheese next day.
- To make more starter simply thaw one cube and add to 0.5 liter/2 cups of fresh milk, mix thoroughly, and stand at room temperature for 16-24 hours or until the consistency of fresh yogurt.
Traps
- Not allowing culture to ripen long enough resulting in weak culture used in cheese making.
- Not labeling freezer container/bag and 2-3 months later getting it confused with frozen Thermophilic or Yogurt Culture cubes.
- Not using clean ice cube trays, resulting in contamination of your culture.
