Hey All,
It has been a while since I've been on the board and since I made cheese, been meaning to for quite a while, but haven't done anything since last summer. I am still quite the novice when it comes to pressed cheeses, but I already find myself experimenting (not so great at following directions all the time....). I'm a big fan of fresh cheddar curds, especially from a local cheese-maker who makes the most delicious and buttery curds I've had, so when I saw this post (
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,9225.msg65635.html#msg65635) a while back it has been on my mind as a possible make. I have a ton of DS cultures on-hand because I had a groupon to a homebrew store, and another homebrew store was doing a close-out inventory sale, so I decided to try to play with the recipe based on what I had. I noticed that meso DS (C101) seems similar to MM100 but is missing Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, but I had both Fromage Blanc DS (C20) and Chevre DS (C20G) which do contain it. I decided to improvise and use one of those (picked Chevre since I don't have easy access to goat's milk, but they look quite similar to me anyways....), though I wasn't sure how strong those cultures are and how much the coagulating agent in the Chevre would impact things, so I mixed a pack of the C20G with C101 and used that for my initial 3 hour culture, then added in thermo DS (C201). I intended to be very good about taking detailed notes but I wound up baking during the cheese make and my attention was a bit split, listed below is everything I recall:
Ingredients:
2 gallons p/h whole milk (cheapo, walmart variety....)
1/8 tsp C101 and C20G mixture
1/8 tsp C201
1/2 tsp calcium chloride dissolved in 1/4c cold water
1/2 tsp liquid animal rennet dissolved in 1/4c cold water (plus about 4 extra drops as my supplies are at least 6 months old and I didn't know how long they've been in the stores....)
~2% of curd weight cheese salt (around 25 grams if I recall)
Make on Saturday 4/5/14:
0:00-0:20- heat milk to 76 degrees (more like 77.5)
0:20- add 1/8 tsp c101 and c20g mixture, stirred and then let culture for 3h
3:20-3:35 heat milk to 92 degrees
3:35- add 1/8 tsp C201, stirred and let culture for 30m
4:05- add calcium chloride, stir
4:07- add rennet, stir for 30 seconds, top stir
Attempted floc method, got 7 minutes, a little on the short side
4:28- checked curd, still very soft, like yogurt, decided to just wait the half hour
4:37- cut curd (attempted 3/8" cubes but not very good at this at all)
4:37-4:45- let curds heal
4:45- slowly raise temperature to 102 degrees (temp had dropped to 85 when I started this process), stirring slowly
5:20- reach 102 degrees, take off heat, let curds settle
5:22- stir curds, breaking up matting, let settle again
5:25- stir curds once more, scoop into cheesecloth to drain
5:30- put curds in 4" mold and press at ~2PSI for 1 hour
6:30- remove curds from press, break up and salt (~37oz of curd after first pressing). Cheese was somewhat crumbly (a bit on the dry side?) and did not tear into nice olive sized pieces. Kept about 4oz for eating fresh (decently tasty, a little more flavor than a fresh mozz but no where near that of the curds I get from the local creamery)
6:35- put curds back in mold. I was worried about the curds knitting because the ambient temp in my house was around 65 so I dunked them in the warm (~75 degrees still) whey for 30 seconds, then pressed for 10 minutes at 2PSI
6:45- flipped, redressed, another dunk in warm whey, pressed for 25 min at ~3PSI
7:10- flipped, put in mold without cheesecloth in hopes of smoothing out, one more dunk in whey, pressed for 15 hours at ~3.6PSI.
Cheese removed from press on Sunday morning and has been air-drying since. My house is between 60-65 and humidity levels are a loooow 30-35% so the cheese has that to contend with. Weight out of press was right around 30 ounces.
First two pics are of the cheese shortly after pressing, the 3rd is from this morning after almost 48 hours air-drying. The first day I was flipping the cheese every 4-6 hours, then yesterday was every 12, and today I won't be home until late so it will be on the one side for a good 16-17 hours before getting flipped again. The plan is to vac seal and put it in the cave at 55 either today or tomorrow and let it age for a couple weeks (not sure how many yet).
