Author Topic: Chevre Making - Kitchen Fridge Temperature Impact?  (Read 1730 times)

mspieg

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Chevre Making - Kitchen Fridge Temperature Impact?
« on: November 04, 2012, 06:13:15 PM »
If, due to time constraints, during a lactic bloomy rind make, I were to heat my goat's milk to the proper temp, add the cultures, and then pop it into the fridge, for, say, 36 hours, rather than 18-24 hours, would it still develop properly at the cooler temp, given the additional time? Or would the colder temp just bring the culturing to a screeching halt? Alternately, what is the *max* recommended time for culturing at room temp, is 30 hours way too long?

thx!

Spellogue

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Re: Chevre Making - Kitchen Fridge Temperature Impact?
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2013, 02:46:54 PM »
I'm surprised you didn't get any answers to this post initially.  Answers now might be too late for your make last (northern hemisphere) fall, but many of us might learn something from the questions you raise.  I hope the recent board adjustment will resurrect the topic.  I'm curious to know others' input.

I would tend to think that moving the culturing milk to fridge temps would slow the bacterial activity to a snail's pace and you would need to bring it back up to your  prescribed culturing temp to get things going again.  If you need to put your make on hold for an extended period of time, it really couldn't hurt to try refrigerating and then resuming the make at a more convenient time.  All your ingredients are already in the soup by then and you've nothing to lose but a bit of your time and effort.  Might give an interesting twist to the resulting cheese.

As for extended culturing, I don't think 30 hrs is out of the question.  I've gone beyond 24 hrs in a chèvre make before when life got in the way, but not much beyond 28 or so in my experience.  I like to culture chèvre from our raw goat milk to around 18 hrs, because I don't like it really tart.  Beyond 30 hrs I think it would end up far too acidified for most palates.  Culturing too long might also make for a very crumbly, even grainy, end result in a chèvre or a poor knit in a molded cheese.  Overly high acidification could also hamper the desired mold growth in a bloomy rinded attempt.