Author Topic: My first slurry Blue - Questions  (Read 1422 times)

Spellogue

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My first slurry Blue - Questions
« on: June 09, 2013, 10:57:30 PM »
I started a blue with mold captured from a store-bought cheese this afternoon.  It's a little cheese made from little goats (Nigerian Dwarf) milk.  Early in the season I don't have as much milk because we feed more than half back to the kids.  I'm more inclined to experiment with these small batches.  I've tried to be specific here since I'm seeking feedback. The seed cheese was a Stella Blue, an inexpensive cheese.  I'm hoping to figure out any necessary improvements for bigger batch makes using a better seed cheese later in the season.

Here are the make notes:

CA136d.   Little Blue. 6/9
  3 quart fresh raw ND goat milk.
maintain at 86F
  1/16 tsp meso 101
    1/8 tsp CaCl
  3/64 tsp calf rennet   1:14pm
Floculation at 1:22 pm (8 min)
Floc multiplier 3.5 (28 min). 
Cut curd into 1/2 inch cube 1;42 pm
  Heal 5 min
Stir 10 min
Ladle  curd to cloth lined colander. Mix curd with slurry and 3/8 tsp coarse salt.
Transfer cloth with curd to cam mold.  Drain at room temp. 


I used CaCl to ensure a good curd set, probably didn't need it.  Didn't need the heal time either, but it didn't mat severely either.  I'm aiming for good veining more than a creamy paste, so I went for lots of mechanical holes hoping not to sacrifice too much knit.  I figured salting the curd with the slurry was a good idea because I plan to dry salt instead of brining. 

Please comment on things you might have done differently or things you wouldn't change.

Pics are the seed cheese, captured mold, cut and rested curd, slurry, mixing slurry into curd and the cheese in the mold.

Spellogue

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Re: My first slurry Blue - Questions
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2013, 11:15:56 PM »
The other photos:

And I can see little blue flecks through the cheesecloth when I flipped.  So I'm pretty sure I used enough slurry to inoculate.  The form factor is a little small.  Better would have been 6 quarts and stack the cam molds, I think I'll try that. but 3 qts. was all the milk I had on hand today.(i made a couple of cams yesterday too.)