I've switched to the recipe found
here on the site for chevre as the texture is far superior to anything else I've made. BUT, it fails about 25% of the time. This is how it happens:
I heat the milk (raw goat milk, 4 gallons at a time) to 75F and measure the pH. The milk is almost always 6.1-6.3. I then add a generic mesophilic culture (the packets you can get from New England Cheese Making). The recipe says to wait for a 0.2 DROP. This does happen sometimes, other times is increases to something around 6.6 before dropping again. If the increase happens, by the time it drops to 0.2 less than the original number, I add the rennet. When it hits 4.6, it is loose shreds that cannot be strained.
Any ideas on why its increasing or how I should handle it?
(We are getting our raw milk license and I'd like to work up to getting our cheese license. But I need to get better at certain cheeses!)