Just the ticket for a fast make, to use up a pile of milk. It may be an exercise in how not to do things, but we'll see what the results are.
26 L pasteurised, non-hom milk
1/4 tsp Flora Danica
1/4 tsp TCC-20 (Thermo B)
1/32 tsp lipase
3 ml rennet, in 1/2 cup water
60 g salt
Floc multiplier = 3x.
0800 Started heating milk to 31C
0830 Milk at 31C. Added cultures and lipase, rested 5 minutes to hydrate cultures
0835 Stir cultures in. Allow to culture 45 minutes. This is where it all went wrong. The temperature dropped to 30C so I turned the heat on and popped out of the kitchen to do another quick job. The temperature shot up and reached 35C over the course of the next 10 minutes. And one does not lightly take a very-full pan with 26 litres of milk out of a bain marie, so I was stuck with that temperature. Rather than wait for the temp to drop while the cultures were working and without a working pH meter, I pressed on.
0925 Add rennet and give a couple of stirs. T = 35.0 C. Floc = 16 minutes, so set time = 48 minutes.
1020 Cut to 1 cm cubes. Stir, rest 5 minutes to heal. T = 33.7 C.
1030 Stir 10 minutes. T = 33.0 C
1040 Rest 5 minutes to settle.
1045 Drain whey, then drain curds in cloth-lined colander. Twist cloth to release whey.
1110 Return to pot, press to develop curds, stand 15 mins T = 31 C.
1125 Turn curd mass, drain whey (this is the point at which the photo was taken)
1140 Cut curds in half, turn, piling one piece on the other, stand 15 mins T =31 C.
1155 Mill to 1" chunks, add salt, place , cloth-lined mould.
1210 Press 10 mins at 5 kg, then 50 mins at 10 kg
? Flip, press 6 hours at 20 kg.
I'm currently at the first press. The photo shows the curds on the first flip, starting to show some of the classic cheddared development.