When I re-look at Caldwell's book I think this make style is sort of in-between a stirred curd cheddar and a caerphilly.
This is my 4th time using 4 gallons of milk in the Avantco food warmer, and the second time using John@PC's temp controller. This time I put the sensor probe halfway down the inside of the unit in the water, instead of nearer to the heating unit in the bottom of the warmer. This made the differential between the milk temp and the water temp much smaller. But again I was surprised at the 'creep" in temperature. I did not chart the time, but my milk was at 84 and my target was 86 to 88. The water temp was showing 90 even with the controller at 88, and there wasn't much progression toward the goal temp. So I turned the temp controller from 88 up to 92 for a relatively short time to kick it back on and as the milk started to increase in temp, I turned the controller back to 90. The milk went from 84 to 89 in a relatively short amount of time. So I need to learn the use of the controller a little better.
Other than trying to better manage the temperature, the make went quite well. I used Kazu rather than 4001 for a starter because when I went to the freezer, I was out of 4001. I also was given a cup of raw goats milk, so I threw that in with the other milk. Acidity developed at a steady slow manageable pace. Flocculation was a nice 14.5 mins. I cut back on the multiplier from 3.5 to 3 because the last few times the cheese was almost too moist and sticking to the knife on slicing.
I am trying to make spread sheets for my makes just for fun, so I can have a fill in the blanks rather than a narrative to follow. So one attachment is the spreadsheet for the make. The image of the cheese looks less than smooth due to the wrinkles from the cheesecloth, but actually the knit is very nice. I plan on aging 6 weeks due to the raw milk in there, though I drank a bit of the milk without trouble....
