Author Topic: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months  (Read 13794 times)

AnnDee

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #15 on: January 31, 2016, 03:25:29 AM »
To me the taste of this cheese is nutty, right amount of saltiness, the garlic taste is subtle but then again I love garlic. In japanese food this is like the kombu, it has that umami taste and also this cheese reminds me of parmesan, flaky with very very slight tang.
A little shaving goes a long way.

SOSEATTLE

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #16 on: February 02, 2016, 02:14:34 AM »
This is all really interesting. The other day came across genuine Belper Knolle in a local grocery store. Would have loved to try it, but thought that $19 each was a little steep  :o. I might have to try making my own.


Susan

AnnDee

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #17 on: February 02, 2016, 04:36:40 AM »
Wow, 19 bucks for 1 piece is much steep for me! It costed me less to make 1 batch, you definitely get more than a piece out of it too.

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #18 on: February 03, 2016, 01:38:13 AM »
The biggest challenge I've got in understanding this cheese is what the pH is at the time of salting.  Maybe Susan could take a clean Extech pH meter to the shop and for a could of dollars get the pH.   :)  Seriously, I'm torn between whether this is a lactic curd cheese which implies a pH down in the 4.6 range or whether it is a rennet coagulated cheese with a pH in the low 5 range.  To me the video supports the rennet theory but an in an e-mail exchange with Jim Wallace at New England Cheese, the lactic curd route was supported.  It may be possible to go the lactic curd route with raw milk and have the make steps look like the video but I am skeptical.  :o
« Last Edit: February 03, 2016, 04:06:33 AM by Kern »

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #19 on: February 03, 2016, 04:05:23 AM »
I'll stay with this thread a bit as I'm researching Belper Knolle and formulating a strategy to come up a more correct recipe than the one on the New England Cheese website.  There are lots of links in my posts above and I'll not repeat them here.  I did come up with a proposed recipe and made some BK using this procedure, which I've outlined below and posted a couple of photos of my efforts.  Here is the short version of my Belper Knolle #2 make:

1.  One gallon of Twin Brooks vatpat whole cream top milk heated to 86F.
2.  Add 30 grams of lactose, 1/4 tsp CaCl, 1/16 tsp Flora Danica, 1/8 tsp rennet.
3.  Cover pot with towels to preserve heat.  Cut curd to 1-inch cubes at 75 minutes.
4.  Rest in pot with occasional lifting to whey pH = 5.8  (This took 5 hours)
5.  Drain to curd level, load cloth lined colander, drain and place drained curd in SS bowl (picture below).
6.  Ripen in bowl  to curd pH of 5.2.  This took 90 minutes.
7.  Transfer to Cuisinart to mix curd and mix in garlic and salt.
8.  Make balls and place on cutting board in cold fridge to firm up.  Took four hours.
9.   Roll balls in toasted cracked pepper and place on mat under fan (picture below)
10.  Into cave when dry on outside.  Took 24 hours.

This recipe has several problems.  First, the curds should have been drained when the whey pH was about 6.4 (about 90 minutes after cutting).  Then they should have been ripened in the bowl to the target pH.  The above recipe produced a drained curd that resisted kneading and sticking together.  I only overcame this when I cut the curds to a paste in the Cuisinart then they more or less stuck together but could be broken apart even after chilling.  I worked around this and they stabilized once they had been dried for a bit.  I think that I would have avoided this had I drained the curds at a higher pH and placed them in a bowl to ripen to the goal pH.

I have no idea what the BK pH should be.  This current batch was salted at a pH of 5.2.  The first batch described above was salted at a pH of 4.6.  Only a taste test in several weeks is going to reveal which might be better.  I see no reason why both batches won't dry.

What went well:  While more expensive than the P&H milk used in my first batch (over twice as much) this milk performed exquisitely better.  I started this batch at 11:00am and rolled it in pepper about eleven hours later.  The P&H lactic batch took almost 48 hours to go the same distance due to problems with draining poorly formed curd.

Steps necessary to make this cheese:  In addition to the above there are two critical steps I got from the video.  Both worked extremely well.  The first is to put the formed balls in the cold fridge and allow them to firm up.  I put them on a cutting board.  They slumped a bit and I simply cut them off the board and reformed them.  After about 4 hours they no longer slumped and I could roll them cold in the cracked pepper.  The second step was to place the peppered balls as shown in the second photo and put a fan on them.  They were in my 60F garage with an RH of about 60%.  I left them under the fan for about 24 hours before putting them in the normal 55/85 cave.  The balls seemed damp after a day in the cave so I pulled them out and put them under the fan for another 16 hours then back in the cave where they are currently dry.  It is possible that I might have to do this again in a couple of days as in inner moisture migrates to the rind.  This will greatly speed up the desired drying of this cheese and help prevent any mold growth.

Tasting notes to follow in several weeks.  :)


AnnDee

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #20 on: February 03, 2016, 09:19:16 AM »
I have been waiting for this and I am saving your recipe for my future make.
Question:
1. How do I get lactose and what is the function (particularly on making BK)?
2. What do you think of adding cream to the milk? Maybe it will change the taste entirely and make it a different cheese altogether, right?

It will be interesting to find out the final taste of your make.

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #21 on: February 03, 2016, 08:31:29 PM »
I've exchanged a couple of e-mails with Jim Wallace of New England Cheese.  Jim is convinced that Belper Knolle is modeled after a cream cheese recipe where a couple of cheeses aging on a wood shelf were inadvertently left to dry.  This, in Jim's mind makes it a lactic cheese.  Here is a quote from one of his e-mails:

"Now lactic cheese can be a moving target going from pure lactic with no rennet addition to the point where it become predominantly enzymatic or rennet based. The character of the curd is very different as it moves along the scale from lactic to enzymatic. This cheese is definitely to the lactic side of things. From what I have been able to pick up this is somewhere between a fromage blanc and a cream cheese. I would guess closer to a fromage blanc judging by how brittle the final cheese is."

My contention is that the video looks like a make coagulated with rennet:  cut curds, easily drained, not hung in bags, etc.  This engendered the following exchange:

Kern:  "Perhaps it is possible to cut lactic curds as nicely as the ones in the video if one uses raw milk."
Jim's response:  "lactic curds can be quite firm and can be cut and drained .. you just can not stir them without them breaking up"

He further added this piece of information he got during a visit to the Belper Knolle maker (Peter Glauser) in Belp:

"Forgot to add another bit of info I got from them...
The cream cheese variant thereof has been around for 23 years
This was the original cheese that dried down becomes BK.. cream cheese is definitely a lactic cheese"


So, here is what I now think:

Originally, Belper Knolle was made using a cream cheese recipe with very little added rennet using raw cow's milk.  It was a traditional lactic make:  12+ hours of ripening time combined with bag draining to the proper moisture level followed by mixing to smooth out the make and add the salt and garlic.  The product was made into balls that were chilled to firm them and then rolled in pepper.  The makers discovered that putting a fan on them immediately after the pepper step helped keep them firm and dry out the rind, thus keeping the round shape and helping to keep mold in check.  This is a start to finish make of something like 24+ hours and lends itself to "occasional makes". 

The problem with the above method is that the cheese became wildly successful in Europe.  Peter Glauser along with several others created the Jimi group to help market it and it is a very popular cheese available all over Europe.  There is no way the traditional lactic process (little or no added rennet) could keep up with demand.  You can't contract with dairymen for large amounts of milk on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and tell them to dump it on the other four days of the week!  You need to have a process timed to lactation and make the cheese every day.  To do this with BK you need to modify the lactic process to fit the time constraints and you do it by adding just enough rennet so that you produce cuttable, easily drained curd.  Since crud occupies a small fraction of the volume of the original milk and is much more biologically stable, you can store the unfinished curd allowing the pH to drop to the former levels it would have achieved through a more pure long-drained lactic process.

This suggests something like the recipe I proposed above but with the curd cut at the proper time to achieve proper moisture content and good draining ability.  Raw milk really helps in this.  The drained curd is then accumulated in a non-draining vat and allowed to drop to the proper pH (whatever that is but I'll bet it is in the 4.6-4.8 range).  The reason the curd is moved in the video from the draining vat to the "accumulation vat" is so that there is no more moisture lost to the whole.  Any whey that drains in the accumulation vat is mixed into the cheese paste when the salt and garlic are added.  Moisture content at this point is critical as it allows one to form stable balls:  too much and they will be sloppy and slump, too little and the balls won't hold together.

Now to your specific questions:

I added lactose (purchase on Amazon) to the P&H milk as I've found in making Camemberts with P&H milk that I can't get to a pH of 4.6 without adding it.  I left it in on the second batch simply to eliminate a possible variable when taste comparing the two later.  I've made Cams with this milk and get to 4.6 without added lactose.

Try making it with added cream.  It might affect the drying and should give the taste more "mouth feel".  I doubt that it will be as hard.





AnnDee

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2016, 01:06:32 AM »
As I said before, you are quite a cheese detective. A cheese for you for all the effort.
I am making adjustment notes on your recipe based on this new findings and as today my supply of raw jersey milk is on the way, I will make another batch.

I've never known cheese making can be this exciting, thank you!

olikli

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #23 on: February 04, 2016, 09:00:34 PM »
Kern, I am convinced that this is a predominantly lactic cheese, and it's absolutely common that a little bit of rennet is added to lactic cheeses. To me the interior looks typical for a dried lactic cheese. Wouldn't the cheese turn yellow after a while with a purly rennet based curd? Your doubts seem to be mostly because of the logistics of milk supply, but wouldn't it be possible that they have found a way to get the supply they need?

It seems clear that the original was a lactic cream cheese. (And note that in the Germanic realm this this is referred to as "Frischkäse" that usually does not use additional cream). I can not imagine that in order to recreate this cheese the inventors would change something as fundamental as the basic type of coagulation.

Coincidentially I came across an Austrian Belper Knolle clone a few weeks ago that I am sure was lactic, but I have not tried the original yet. Currently I am ripening an experimental batch of a standard lactic curd that I drained and shaped into balls. They were still rather soft when I coated them (not with pepper, I used paprika and herbs because I don't like peppery cheese very much). But now, one week after making them, they come along niceley. I am confident that the cheeses will turn out nicely, and I did not measure pH since I don't own a pH meter. I would think that tweaking pH is only the second step once the basic procedure has been established.

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #24 on: February 04, 2016, 11:30:23 PM »
Upon reflection I think that Belper Knolle is most likely a semi-lactic cheese.  That is, it uses a little rennet in the recipe.  Remember that it is a raw milk cheese and according to this, raw milk does not form a curd firm enough to be cut and manipulated as shown in the video using a pure lactic (no rennet) process .  I have yet to experimentally establish this but plan to do so as follows:

1 gallon of raw milk
1/8 tsp Flora Danica ripen for 30 minutes @ 86F
6 drops of SS Calf's rennet
Cut into 1-inch cubes when firm (75-90 minutes)
Allow to settle until curds expel enough whey to sink
Drain to curd level, ladle into cloth lined draining vat
Remove from vat when most "free" whey has drained and place into non draining tub.
Allow to mat and ripen to a pH of 4.8, spooning off and retaining expelled whey.
Mix to uniform consistency in Kitchenaid mixer and add mashed up garlic and salt.  Add back reserved whey to mixer if necessary to form a "balling non-sagging paste".
Form balls and place on plastic cutting board or SS cookie sheet and put in cold fridge to firm up.
Roll firmed balls in toasted and ground pepper to thoroughly coat.
Immediately put coated balls on drying rack with fan blowing air on them.  60F+/- and 70%RH +/- is ideal.  Time should be 24 to 48 hours and rind should be hard.
Put in cave @ 55F, 85%RH for 2-8 weeks or more.

I'll adjust the rennet from the above starting point and refine other parameters as per olikli's suggestions.

What I really like about making this cheese is that experimentation can be done with a small batch.  I don't have to haul out my large vat, heating try, controllers, etc. to have a little cheese making fun.  The "thrill" of chasing down a good procedure adds to the excitement.  ;D

olikli

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2016, 05:32:21 AM »
Upon reflection I think that Belper Knolle is most likely a semi-lactic cheese.  That is, it uses a little rennet in the recipe. 

Yes, I believe that too. I should have written semi-lactic in the first place, but then again the term semi-lactic is slightly misleading because adding just a little rennet does not change the character too much. Overall a "semi"-lactic cheese is much closer to a full lactic one than to a full rennet one.

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2016, 04:13:22 PM »
Sometimes I don't see the forest for the trees!   :(  Revelation time:

One clue I overlooked in the video was the large scraggly diamond shaped white scum floating on the liquid on top of the vat containing the now sinking cut curds.  I have never seen this on any rennet coagulated cheese I've ever made.  The whey is usually clear with a yellow cast.  The only time I've ever seen white scum is when I once made ricotta cheese from drained whey made by adding acetic acid to 190F whey.  Obviously, the diamond shape comes from cutting the curds and white scum from the gelatinous mass prior to cutting.  The scum had to be loosely attached to the mass or it could not have been cut as appears in the video.

All this got me thinking about the difference between a lactic and rennet cheese.  To be a lactic cheese the milk has to have a pH of about 4.5 or less and it is the lactic cultures that get it there.  The reason is that the pH has to be at least this low for the whey proteins to precipitate and the cheese is not a lactic cheese unless they do.  If you cut the curd at a higher pH the whey proteins stay dissolved in the separating whey and you have not made a lactic cheese.  There really is no such thing as a semi-lactic cheese.  It is, as Olikli points out, a mid-leading term.  You either hit the pH that precipitates the whey proteins and have a lactic cheese or you don't and won't have one.   Added rennet does not change this in any meaningful way.  It may make the gelling mass firmer (maybe better for draining, eh?) but if the mass pH drops below 4.5 or so you have a lactic cheese regardless.

So, why add the rennet to the raw milk Belper Knolle cheese?  As referenced above raw milk does not form a firm enough curd when used to make a lactic cheese.  Add the rennet and it will form a firm curd as the pH is dropping to the 4.5 range.  Likewise, P&H milk even with added rennet will not form a firm enough curd to be cut and processed as in the video.  If you want to make BK cheese with P&H milk then use drain and bag technique in the recipe on the New England Cheese website (linked to above).  If you are making a BK cheese with either raw or vat pasteurized (non-homoginized) milk then you can add about half the rennet as normal for a rennet coagulated cheese but you don't cut the curd until the mass has reached a pH of 4.5 or lower so that you capture the whey proteins.  Once cut you can handle the curds as in the video.  Here is the modified procedure taking all this into account:

1 gallon of raw milk
1/8 tsp Flora Danica ripen for 60 minutes @ 86F
6 drops of SS Calf's rennet.  Stir and set aside for 14-24 hours.
Cut into 1-inch cubes when the pH has dropped to 4.5 or below for at least two hours.
Allow to settle until curds expel enough whey to sink
Drain to curd level, ladle into cloth lined draining vat
Remove from vat when most "free" whey has drained and place into non draining tub.
Mix to uniform consistency in Kitchenaid mixer and add mashed up garlic and salt.  Add back reserved whey to mixer if necessary to form a "balling non-sagging paste".
Form balls and place on plastic cutting board or SS cookie sheet and put in cold fridge to firm up.
Roll firmed balls in toasted and ground pepper to thoroughly coat.
Immediately put coated balls on drying rack with fan blowing air on them.  60F+/- and 70%RH +/- is ideal.  Time should be 24 to 48 hours and rind should be hard.
Put in cave @ 55F, 85%RH for 2-8 weeks or more.

Offline awakephd

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2016, 05:19:50 PM »
Kern, thanks for all your work on this; I hope to give it a try this weekend. A couple of questions (which may have been answered elsewhere, and I just haven't looked hard enough) -- how much garlic, and how much salt? Is anything done to "sterilize" the garlic? And finally, how long do you age?

One other question -- I'm wondering if Flora Danica is the best option for the culture. I find that FD doesn't want to get all the way down to the 4.5 pH range, or at least the package I am currently using doesn't seem to. If I get a chance to try it this weekend, I think I'll go with MA011, maybe with some MD088 thrown in -- essentially the same cultures as in the FD, but much faster acidifying ...
-- Andy

Kern

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2016, 06:08:55 PM »
I used fresh garlic.  So do the Belper Knoll makers (see above referenced video).  There should be no issues with this as the pH of the cheese is in the 4.6 range.  Use about 3 cloves per gallon of milk.  Mince it finally and then grind in about 1.5 teaspoons of Himalayan pick salt per gallon.  Add to the cheese in a mixer after it has reached the goal pH and then proceed as above.  Two key points:  After the salt/garlic form the cheese into ball (or plops) and put in cold fridge.  You can cut the cheese off the cutting board after it begins to set and "re-ball" it.  Toast the whole black pepper in a oil less frying pan, cool and then coarse grind.  Use a half cup or so.  I put my pepper in a SS bowl and rolled the firmed cheese in it.  It will latch onto what pepper it can and then no more.  Immediately put peppered ball under a fan as in my photo above.  Leave it like this for 24-48 hours and then the standard cave.  Age for 2-6 weeks or more.

I added 30 grams of lactose per gallon for my two batches and had no problem getting to a whey pH of 4.2-4.4 on the first batch (P&H milk, 24 hours draining).  The cheese had a pH of 4.6 immediately before salting.  I see no reason not to try MA 011 with some MD 088.  Let us know how it works as we need to build a body of trial (and error) on this cheese.  It is a hot seller in Europe but largely unavailable in the US likely because of the strong market in Europe plus the restrictive regulations in the US regarding the import of raw milk cheese. 

Offline awakephd

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Re: Belper Knolle: aged for 2 months
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2016, 07:51:18 PM »
Thanks, Kern, very helpful. Any thoughts about the Himalayan pink salt vs. regular cheese salt? I read a few articles on line about the former, but most of them sounded, at least to my non-chemist/biologist ears, a bit too much like a late-night TV commercial. :(
-- Andy