Hi MooKit,
Welcome to the board. You'll find lots of great protocols and advice here, and good friends too. If I can offer one bit of advice, take good, and complete, notes. Note times and temperatures, and if you get a ph meter, then take readings. If you notice something that you think might be important, write it down in your make notes. Record all sorts of things you think might be pointless because often if things go really right or really wrong, it's the little things that make the difference.
Also, be aware that 1) rennet comes in many different strengths! A recipe will often say "add 1/4 tsp rennet", or some measurement, but if they don't tell you how strong it is then it's not much use! Go by what the package of your rennet tells you. Then, learn the floc method (search the boards, you'll find it) and use that to adjust your amount until you get the milk gelling in the 10-15 minute range. Rennet is something you need to measure very exactly. 2) If your curds just shatter when you stirr them, you can still make a cheese in the end, but use a different brand of milk next time. Most organic milk is high heat pasturized and useless for most cheesemaking. Find a member on the board who is from an area near you and ask them what they use. If you have access to raw milk, that will be the best. 3) mozzarella is not an easy cheese, avoid it for now unless you have access to raw milk. 4) For hard cheeses, start with caerphilly. It is a favorite of many, and it is ready to eat in as little as 3 weeks. Most hard cheeses require at least 2 months to develop decent flavour. 5) in the library /software boards I have made available an excel booklet called "cheesetools.xls" which has a lot of calculations that I find useful when making cheese 6) search the boards and read old threads, lots of things have been covered here over the years and this is a very useful archive of tips and tricks 7) and most important of all, all advice should be listened to, but not necessarily followed!
- Jeff
