Lancashire----200 Easy Cheese Recipe-----Modified by MrsKK
Decided I wanted to make a simple short aged cheese, and this seemed ideal. Below you will find the make notes and a few pics. You will also see some problems I ran into----so any help with those would be appreciated. And it didn’t turn out to be all that simple.
Also checked ph throughout make and noted them----even though recipe has no ph markers
Qdog
3 gallons whole P/H milk
1 gallon 2% P/H milk
1 tsp. cal.chlor.
2.8 ml rennet
1 1/3 cups cultured butter milk
3 tbs salt
9:10---Warm milk to 88 degrees----maintained through entire make----ph 6.68
9:11 add butter milk
10:00 add cal. Chl. In ¼ cup water-------ph 6.49
10:04 add rennet
Floc.---13 min. x 3.5 floc. Factor-----exactly corresponds to 45 min. wait time of recipe
10:49 check for clean break----good to go ---I thought
10:50 cut curd to 3/8” sq.-----seemed a little soft----see notes at bottom
10:56 let rest 5 min.
11:01 stir curds for ten min.----rest another 5 min.--------ph at 6.39
11:17 drain into cloth lined colander-------whey will barely drain through cheese muslin-----had to twist and hang and squeeze------see notes below
12:00 curds in pot to form cake
12:15 flip whole cake over---------6.48 ?
12:30 cut in half and stacked
12:45 removed cake to cutting board and cut to 1/2” sq.----into bowl and salted
1:05 into 6” cloth lined mold at ten lbs. for 20 min. until whey stoped dripping
1:30 flipped----increase weight to 20 lbs. until whey stopped dripping
1:55 flipped ----weight up to 42 lbs. for 1 hour
2:55 flipped----weight up to 174 lbs.-----for 4 hrs. -------ph at 6.02 ?
7:00 remove from press to air dry------------------------------ph at 5.50 ? half hour later, back to 6.02
Weight out of press---4 lb. 9 oz. ---much to heavy for a 4 gallon make-----my guess it retained to much whey
Now for some of the problems
#1 this had the nicest curds I have ever had with a p/h milk----at least on the top----when I cut the curds there appeared to be about an inch to an inch and a half of what looked like the texture of yogurt, as if the rennet hadn’t set the milk at the bottom-----never had this happen before-----any ideas? This led to some of the other problems, I think
#2 the whey would barely drain through the muslin, I think the “yogurt” clogged the muslin and may have led to even more whey retention
#3 due to night temperatures approaching single digits----my cheese room was down to 57 degrees---almost to my cheese cave temp-----this required some emergency temp. control at the press----an old enamel canner got some roof defrosting cable wrapped around it and a temp controller kept the inside at about 75 degree-----don’t laugh ---it worked---might have to consider making a permanent one (see pics) may have been to late ----curd had gotten pretty cold---but finally got a good knit at +5psi
#4 notice the ph was all over the place towards the end----I don’t know what is going on there---it was calibrated and verified three times during the make.
It is possible that the milk was at least part of the problem---It seems to me that I had trouble with this brand of milk before---but it was quite some time ago, when I was just starting out and I figured it was just my inexperience ---maybe not.
Any thoughts—guys and gals?
