I am currently tuned in to "channel Kern"---and waiting for the news -----that seems to be the same problem I have been having with all the P/H milk lately and I believe Andy has had similar problems.
Back at it! Too tired to post last night so I just slogged through the cheese making. Following are some tidbits from my notes. The draining (hanging in cheesecloth) started at 1:00pm local time. So my last post above was at the 3 hour point. I decided to go check the drip rate with a timer instead of estimating as I did above. pH values for curd only.
4:40pm: 25 drips in 112 seconds
5:52pm: 25 drips in 282 seconds
6:00pm: pH 5.38 (vs. 5.82 at 4:40pm)
4:00 - 6:00pm drip amount: 150ml (about 6 fluid ounces vs. 16 fluid ounces in the 2:00pm to 4:00pm interval)
8:00pm: pH 5.12 - drips about 2-3/ minute
10:00pm: pH 5.02
The temperature in the room was kept at 73F from mid afternoon through salting.
4:30am: pH 4.8, maybe one fluid ounce in the 6.5 hour period. Bottom of cheesecloth was very wet.
4:35am: Ball weight 2.5 pounds (maybe a couple of ounces lost in vat due to curd breakup, etc. Vat pasteurized 2 gallon weight last week was 2#14.5 ounces going into brine.
4:40am: Ball into brine, salted top.
8:30am: Flipped ball salted top. Rind is hardening like last weeks rind.
Plan is to cut the ball in half around 11:00am local time. This will finish heavy brining about 6:00pm this evening. Cutting will be my first look into the interior so I'll be back then.