At the risk of steering the subject a little bit back on course, I made a one gallon Belper Knolle batch starting late yesterday and finishing today using the following method:
1 gallon of whole cream top milk with 1/4 tsp calcium chloride and 30 grams of lactose.
1/8 tsp Flora Danica ripen for 60 minutes @ 86F
6 drops of SS Calf's rennet. Stir and set aside for 16 hours. The towel wrapped pot was 80F in the morning.
Cut into 1-inch cubes when the pH has dropped to 4.6 or below.
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.
Hand mixed to uniform consistency and added mashed up garlic and salt.
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.
My goal was to get to a "moldable" consistency like that in the video with an acceptably short enough drain time.
I don't know if the lactose is necessary. I used it because I wanted to make sure I could get the pH down below 4.6 where the whey proteins should precipitate.
At 16 hours quite a bit of whey had separated and the curd lump seemed firm and had reached a pH of 4.55.
The curd was cut but was too soft and some shattering occurred. Apparently, the large lump seemed firm because a lot of the separated whey came from the outer portions.
Final draining was in a cloth bag but went fairly well regardless.
All the whey was collected and heated to 190F to check for any whey protein precipitation. There was none so it all must have happened within the curd mass when the pH got down into the 4.6-4.7 range.
The balls were easily formed, held their shape and the consistency looked very similar to that of the pumped plops in the video. They weren't sticky.
The balls stiffened up very nicely in the cold fridge and held their shape much better than previous makes - very little slumping.
Next time I'll repeat the above but pump the rennet up to ten drops and let the pH drop to 4.5. Cutting the hopefully firmer curds and allowing more "bathing time" prior to draining should allow for draining without a bag as was done in the video.