Fat content in milk, and yield relationships

[scasnerkay]

The milk I use comes from one Jersey cow. She is being milked twice a day, once at about 9AM and once at about 4PM. Not an optimal spacing, but the place is mostly volunteers, and staff goes home at 4:30.  She gives about 4.5 gallons in the morning, and 2.5 gallons in the PM. I have the impression that the milk in the afternoon milking seems higher in fat content and I wondered if that could be possible? It feels and looks a bit different than the AM milk...
Sometimes I am the morning milker, and other days the PM milker. Recently I made a tomme from 2 days of PM milk. I used 4.25 gallons, and the yield was over 5#.
Yesterday I made a cheddar from AM milk, using 3.75 gallons, and the yield was 3#. Quite a difference.
In both cases, the make went as expected, and the whey coming off was clear. So I am trying to figure out what else may have made such a difference. Usually cheddar yield is quite a bit less than semi hard cheeses. But....

[Gregore]

I can not  say all the things that could lead to differences in outcomes of cheese volume but I can say the a reblochon cheese is called that because it is made from the milk of the second milking after the tax collector has left . And it is a higher fat cheese than normal cheeses for this reason  so it stands to reason that an afternoon milking  that is only 7 hrs later should have more fat than a 9 am milking that is 17 hrs later .

[Mermaid]

That is indeed very interesting! Especially because in lactating human women, their breast milk contains more fat in PM vs. AM. The fat percentage is tied to time. Perhaps because animals (and us) eat less during nighttime.

[scasnerkay]

Very interesting indeed about women! If I put the milk into glass half gallon jars in the frig for a day or two, I can see the cream line, and my recollection is that it is a much thicker layer for the PM collection. But I will try and collect some evidence! Mostly if I do a morning collection I prefer to not even refrigerate, and just start the make!

I made a reblochon recently, my first try, and knowing it is supposed to be the richer milk, I added some cream from a morning collection to the milk from a PM collection. From 2.25 gallons the yield was 3.3#. The cheese is almost slippery there is so much cream! Not sure on that one!

[Gregore]

It would be interesting to hear from some one who milks their cow exactly the same spacing from each other to see if the time of day also leads to a richer pm milk

[scasnerkay]

I made another small tomme today, from milk collected yesterday afternoon, and again I have great yield: 2 gallons milk and 2.75# cheese.
In both tommes, the milk has seemed very creamy - like coating the lips! The tomme I made about a week ago is in the cave and still is quite soft and moist.
I also found a side panel in Caldwells book that indicated there is more fat with a shorter interval of milking than a longer one.
What I really need to do is collect some milk from  morning, and some from afternoon and refrigerate them overnight and see where the cream line is in the jar!!

So with the really fatty milk from the afternoon, what types should I be making??

I did a reblochon from a PM collection, adding some extra cream from another jar. I may have overdone the fat content!

[scasnerkay]

One more note on this topic! I collected milk on Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday morning. Both were in the refrigerator until Wednesday mid-day. Now I have evidence! The cream line was about 1 inch lower in the jar from afternoon milking than it was from morning milking! That seems like quite a lot of difference to me!! The afternoon cream also seemed to form a more distinct line in the jar and was thicker to stir into the milk. My impression is that milk collected in the morning has more water in it! More whey comes off, and the yield is less. Interesting!

[Kern]

So with the really fatty milk from the afternoon, what types should I be making??

I like the flavor of a blue cheese that has been "dosed" with extra cream.  Stabilized white bloomies contain extra cream.  Then there is that royal combination:  Cambozola. 

Remember that is this the fat to protein ratio that commercial cheese makers shoot for.