Hello From Oregon

[goatgirl]

Hello! Just discovered the forum yesterday, joined, and am introducing myself here-call name is GoatGirl, but my name is Ellen. I live in Oregon, have raised Nubian dairy goats for going on 40 years and been an
avid hobby/homestead cheesemaker for many years, recently become
a professional cheesemaker at a small, artisanal goat dairy which is
the only licensed dairy for raw fluid milk in our state, as well as making
a variety of fresh chevres. Planning on branching out to aged cheeses
in the next year or so commercially, though have made them at home for some years.
     Any experience working with calcium chloride?? Feedback, tips very welcome!

[wharris]

Ellen,
Welcome to the forum.  You are one of the few people here that are actually pros at this.  The rest of us just want to be.

You will find a number of other caprine-types here. 

Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) is an ongoing topic of discussion on the forum and a quick search on that will yield a number of threads. Some use it, some don't.  I am one that uses pasteurized and homogenized cows milk for my cheese. As such, I use CaCl2.

But, there are others that use the same without adding CaCl2.  I, however, and lost 2 batches (12gallons) total because of the lack of CaCl2, so I will continue to use it for now.

Again, Welcome.

[Cheese Head]

Howdy Ellen and welcome to the forum, hope you don't mind but I moved it to a new Topic as it was hidden behind the sticky post.

Looking forward to your depth of cheesemaking knowledge, especially as you are a commercial artisan cheese maker!

As Wayne says, lots of dicussion here on CACl2. I'm same as Wayne, I now add diluted CACl2 to get better curd sets as I use store bought pasteurized homogenized cow's milk. But the first 15 of my cheese makings I didn't and frankly I didin't see a marked improvement when I did start using it. But the only time I tried using Goat's milk it was store bought Ultra Pasteurized (almost dead) and even with CACl2 I couldn't get a good curd set.

Would love to see some pictures and tips on your commercial Chevre making :).

PS: I just posted a (to me) amazing picture of a goat here, didn't know they could be so expressive!

[Wannie]

Good morning Ellen (goatgirl) and welcome to the forum.  It is a great site with a wealth of good information and a bunch of great people too.

Ronnie from Tennessee...

[summersstudio]

Hello, I'm new too. Looking forward to hearing about your goat cheese experiences! Cheers, LeAnn

[Captain Caprine]

Hey GoatGirl,
You planning on sharing any pics of your herd?
CC

[Tea]

Good morning Ellen and welcome to the forum.  I am one of the ones that doesn't use Cal but then I have access to either fresh milk or only pasturised milk, so I don't find that I need to use it.  But as Wayne said, it is very much a topic of discussion.
Would love to see some pic of your girls, and their cheeses.