How did the cheese turn out in the end SwiftPint? I'm in London and started making my own cheese about a year ago with mixed success. I'd be interested to see how your getting on with it.
Sorry for the long time to reply!
The cheese didn't turn out well at all, but I think that was due to poor conditions in the cheese cave - too warm and too wet.
Now that I have a dedicated fridge to use as a cave I'm back on the forum and going to give it a new try.
More thoughts on milk:
London - Borough Market - raw milk, but it's £3 per litre, which makes it very expensive!
Tesco have their own equivalent of the Jersey Gold top
Waitrose I think ditto - they also do Duchy Organics (think this is homogenised) - also expensive
I tried Daylesford (?) 500ml organic whole milk - plastic bags not cartons - from Waitrose / Ocado - however this try didn't work too well, 2.5L only gave one camembert not two, but it could well have been me!!
Any others? You can buy raw milk from the farmer's gate (!) but in East Anglia there's not a lot of dairy!
I've just started a batch using 5 litres of the Jersey Gold top. Its still £1 a litre in Tesco, so not too bad, same price as Tesco's equivalent (probably the same stuff?)
There a stall at the Sunday market in Blackheath that sells raw milk, I think it's straight from their farm in Kent. I cant remember how expensive it was but certainly cheaper than Borough Market, but not as good as £1.20 a litre!
I've made a couple of batches of hallumi, and I've just used normal tesco whole milk for that & it's come out fine. For anything aged I'd want to use better quality milk, I reckon.
Good to see some more cheesemakes from the UK & London.