Author Topic: Hispanico Experiment - Milk + cream  (Read 1040 times)

Offline scasnerkay

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Sunnyvale, California
  • Posts: 853
  • Cheeses: 197
  • Default personal text
Hispanico Experiment - Milk + cream
« on: March 10, 2014, 01:24:06 AM »
I am still making cheeses for at my daughter's wedding in 4 months. Reading in Caldwell's book, the manchego-like recipe suggests using a high fat milk. The milk I buy at the store is Straus Creamery cream-top Holstein milk, which I think runs about 3.6% fat. So I added 1 cup of lovely Straus Creamery cream per gallon of milk, but I am at a loss on how to figure out the fat percentage now. I think some part of my brain shuts down as soon as I read the word percentage. At any rate, the make went very predictably, following my expectations, with the exception of the curd barely fitting into the form due to the much higher volume.
So I have 2 questions... and please do not judge my arithmetic paralyzed brain
1: How do I calculate the percentage fat in what I made?
2: What should my expectations be if I age this 4 months... should it need longer or shorter because of all that yummy cream?
Susan

JeffHamm

  • Guest
Re: Hispanico Experiment - Milk + cream
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2014, 02:55:59 AM »
Hi Scasnerkay,

Do you know the percentage of fat in the cream?  Is it 40% or 35% etc?  You'll need that information.  Let's go with 40% for this example though.

Ok, you have 1 cup at 40%.  And, you've got some other amount of 3.6% milk.  There are 16 cups to a gallon.  Let's say you're making a 2 gallon cheese, so that's 32 cups of 3.6% fat milk, and 1 cup of 40% milk, for 33 cups total in our make.

So, you have 32 times 3.6 plus 1 times of 40.  32 times 3.6 is 115.2, and we add to that our 40 from our cup of cream, that's 155.2 in our 33 cups of milk.  Divide our 155.2 by 33, to get how much in each cup, and that's 4.7 and small change; meaning you would have 4.7% fat.

- Jeff

Offline scasnerkay

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Sunnyvale, California
  • Posts: 853
  • Cheeses: 197
  • Default personal text
Re: Hispanico Experiment - Milk + cream
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2014, 05:25:00 AM »
Thanks Jeff!  I did more research, and the milk could be called 3.5% and the cream is 35%...  2 cups of cream, and 32 cups of milk and that works out to almost 5.4% fat.... Kind of out of proportion for the proteins.... So what does this mean for aging?  Can it go 4 months, or should it go out further?
Susan

JeffHamm

  • Guest
Re: Hispanico Experiment - Milk + cream
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2014, 05:40:19 AM »
Should be fine at 4 months I would think.

- Jeff