Can you ripen milk for 8 hours?

[Shalloy]

I'm hoping to make some cheese but of course have to go to work. The weekends fully booked so my plan was thus.
1. Tomorrow morning pour the milk into my double boiler and add the mm100 culture and Penicillim Roquefort.
2. Set temp to 32C on the controller and head off to work.
3. 8 hours later when I get home add the rennet and proceed as normal.

Will this 8 hour ripening time be too much?  What if I was to add 1/4 teaspoon instead of a 1/2 teaspoon?  Would that make a difference? 

[awakephd]

Once again, I don't know ... but I will guess: I'm guessing you're going to get too much acid developed before you get the cheese made.

I fight this battle as well -- work is such an annoyance when there is cheese to be made. In general I make cheese only on the weekend, but sometimes I make cheese during the week -- but when I do, I choose a cheese that can fit into a compressed time span, and still try to get home early to begin.

[Gregore]

if you need to start making cheese the moment you get home  then why not make a starter .

1 cup. Milk and a pinch of DVI  mix up 24 hrs or so before needed then add  1.5 to 2  percent of total milk volume in starter  at start of cheese making , you will be able to go directly to renneting .  (  the extra starter can be frozen for next time)

If you used a timer to have the milk start to heat up before you arrived home every thing would be ready to go .


This will save you at least the 1 hr  ripening  time.

 If how ever you need to be even faster you can add more of the starter you made , but all the other ph points along the way will happen sooner , so you have to be on top of your game . I heard some where that slower always makes for better cheese , but if this way is all you have time for .

Once I  accidentally added too much starter and the tomme  was out of the molds and salted in 4.5 hrs

The biggest risk  with too much starter is after rennet waiting and stir time  that you miss the molding time window , the next risk is  not enough drain time for the curds  before low ph is hit  so recipes that call for no pressing might need a little weight .


Mathematically the way you suggested is possible but the amount of DVI would be so small  I would be worried  of the risk other things growing also.

[Sailor Con Queso]

If you add starter and wait 8 hours, or any extended time, the bacteria will produce too much acid.

[Shalloy]

Thanks for the replies. 

Gregore you mention this..

1 cup. Milk and a pinch of DVI  mix up 24 hrs or so before needed then add  1.5 to 2  percent of total milk volume in starter  at start of cheese making , you will be able to go directly to renneting . (  the extra starter can be frozen for next time)

When I made my failed blues on the weekend the recipe said to make a starter with 200mls of cooled boiled milk or UHT (I used UHT) and 1/2 a teaspoon of culture. I did this 24 hours before.  It then says to add this to the warmed milk and wait an hour before renneting.  But you say that you can rennet straight away? Why does the recipe say to wait an hour?

[Gregore]

First 1/2 teaspoon of culture sounds like way too much to me,

I usually use 2 tablespoons of powdered milk to 1 cup of water and about a 1/16 of a teaspoon of DVI culture , put it in a warm place 80 or so degrees and by 24 hrs is  usually ready .

I can not say why they say to wait 1 hr but with the DVI  usually you wait 1 hr for them to wake up , but with starter they are ready to multiply right away

Sailor con queso has a thread about starters , well worth the read.

Another option for you is to make  chèvre   It is a over  night prosses with larger time windows for when things need to get done , much easier for busy people. 

Maybe some one has a cow milk recipe that is as easy as chèvre .

[Andrew Marshallsay]

Work, the curse of the drinking class. (...and cheesemakers too.)

[Shalloy]

I agree with you there raw prawn. It's bad enough when I have to do a brew on a weeknight.  Takes me five hours to brew a beer and I get home at 5.30pm.  But if I mill my Frans etc the day before and fill my HLT up and have everything setup ready I shave a bit of the off that. Still it's a long night.

I managed to convince the missus that we didn't need to go to the engagement we had on Saturday so I'm going to make the blue then. 

[Sailor Con Queso]

A few quick points:

You can warm your milk to room temp ahead of time. In fact it is a common practice in Italy for example to let the afternoon milk ripen overnight then combine that with the next morning milking. HOWEVER they get by with this because of all the natural bacteria in the raw milk. So at home this could also be an excellent chance for bad bacteria and spoilage bacteria to take hold. So, what to do? Let it sit overnight and then test the pH with a good meter before you make cheese. pH strips or a cheap pH meter are not good enough. If contaminants have taken hold they will have started producing acid, just like "sour milk" in your frig. I won't use milk with a pH below 6.60.

DVI use requires the culture to rehydrate, become active, and start producing acid until you see a little drop in pH. Rennet needs a little acid to do a good job of coagulating. That's why the recipes tell you to wait for ~1 hour. Mother Cultures are alive and active and do not require this wait time. That is a HUGE advantage over DVI. This alone saves you an hour with every make. Pre-warming the milk combined with using a MC may save you as much as 1-1/2 hours.

Here is a link to my Mother Culture essay:

Mother Cultures

UHT milk still has thermophilic spoilage bacteria, so do NOT assume that you can use UHT to avoid the sterilization phase. Use very little starter to inoculate the sterilized, and cooled milk. The more you add, the faster the MC will be ready. That concept is also true when using the MC during a make. If you want acid production to proceed more quickly, use more MC in the beginning. The balance of acid production, the final pH, and the flavors of the finished cheese are all a part of the artistry of the cheesemaker.

[Shalloy]

Thanks for the link to your post on mother cultures. I will have a read.  Ive re typed my recipe to include all these bits of information for next time. 

[Shalloy]

And I suppose my other question is do we really have to bother with starter cultures if were using DVI cultures?  Can I just use it direct on the milk and save mucking about with starter cultures?

[Gregore]

Your starter culture more properly known as mother culture are the same thing and are made from the DVI so you do have to muck about with them if you want the time savings.

when you are finished reading the link sailor provided it will all make sence .