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.