Author Topic: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?  (Read 2675 times)

Offline Tiarella

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Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« on: October 19, 2012, 03:11:59 AM »
Making a Chaource style cheese using a mixture of iratherfly and Boofer's recipes and after about 12 hours I check it and notice this.....see photo below.  We have had a hard freeze here so lots of tomatoes ripening upon windowsills, tables, etc.  Lots of other foods harvested and waiting for processing: squash, dried beans, etc. so there may be more stuff in the air than usual.  I had this problem a couple of times months ago but not lately. 

My questions:  does this look like yeast contamination?  Is there anything I can do that'll help this be a cheese anyway?

My make is:
2 1/2 gallons of raw goat milk (Nigerian Dwarf goats) at 71 degrees
added 1/8 tsp. MM100
1/8 tsp PC VB1/8 tsp PLA
rehydrated for 5 minutes then stirred
added 3 drops of double strength vegetable rennet
put in room temp 72 degrees in a room away from all food stuff and vegetables.  12:30
not it's 11:10 pm and check out this photo.  any hints or ideas?  please?    :-\

marydairy

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Re: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2012, 04:43:30 AM »
Its a little hard to tell what is going on from looking at the picture.  A yeast infection will cause the cheese to swell, form tiny holes and can look much like a sponge in texture.  A yeast infection is very easy diagnose.  The cheese will actually smell yeasty.

Offline Tiarella

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Re: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2012, 11:41:50 AM »
Thanks so much for responding, Mary.  This smells good, and not particularly yeasty to me but my nose is a bit stuffy from some allergies so I'm not totally trusting it's ability to get into nuances and I caught this early before it was really going nuts; whatever it is.  It hadn't swelled or developed holes; yet.  Not sure if it would have because I decided to do a predrain on some and mold the rest.  Yes, the photo didn't show a clear picture....what I Noticed the most is that the surface of the curd wasn't flat/smooth.  It had these little up-swellings on it that protruded into the whey. 

When I ladled it into molds it had no little holes in the curd.  It was incredibly creamy, heavy and oily.  I notice my milk is heavier and  creamier right now with the change in season so maybe that's the reason for the curd feeling different during ladling but I don't think it's what made the top of the curd look strange.  I'll see how it does and/or maybe someone will have more ideas. 
thanks!

linuxboy

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Re: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2012, 11:56:51 AM »
Hard to tell, but that might just be cream bits.

marydairy

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Re: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2012, 04:04:47 PM »
I would agree that it could be cream bits.  Don't see this often, but if you think about it, it makes sense.  Cream is fat, fat always rises to the top.  The whey would be heavier than the cream because its mostly water.  So I could see how it would be possible for the cream to want to rise to the top.

Offline Tiarella

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Re: Lactic Coagulation - Small Floating Curds?
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2012, 04:15:11 PM »
Thank you LB and Mary.  I am not sure and as you noticed the photos didn't really get a good enough visual to diagnose I guess.  It was late and I needed to get it into draining and mold stage soon so I could get to sleep but I wish I'd done a cross-section of it before ladling the curds.  It wasn't like cream fully separated and on the surface (at least not as I'd seen photos of it in books and on forum), more like protrusions of curd sticking up a bit but perhaps it was still the fat content driving that movement....just that the fat was still pretty integrated within the milk except in some areas.  I'll see if it happens again, hopefully not, and if it does I'll do a better job and collecting evidence.  There weren't internal bubbles so perhaps it's not yeast......

Thanks again!