Still on the farmhouse Cheddar recipe (which I *will* post here soon!).
I got 2 gallons of "vitamin A" milk from Aldi (at $2.49 a gallon!) and allowed them to slowly come up to ambient temperature, before putting it into a warm water bath.
The curd I got is significantly better than with the skim+cream combo: much firmer, cut much better, but it also seems to be retaining a lot more whey.
I will be interested to see how it turns out.