Hi everyone,
I'm very new to this forum but I've been making cheese now for a little while. I used to work a bit with yogurt and decided that I'd love to learn more about coagulated cheeses. I've been going out to a local sheep farm to learn this on a weekly basis for about a year now. At home I've only tried to use kefir as a starter, following David Asher's book on natural cheese making. Almost every time, however, my cheeses start bloating on day 2 (after salting while air-drying) and I can't figure out why.cThey also lose their beautiful shape and turn into deflated little curd-rags ...
I've changed the milk I'm buying, though I usually use 4real (a local quality QLD, AUS dairy)
I use Milton anti-bacerial solution to sanitize everythin, though I used to boil everything.
I pasteurise the milk just before I use it, including when feeding the kefir though I didn' use to do that.
I feed the kefir everyday, 1 tsp grains/200ml milk
I'm not really sure what the problem is but I've just put the kefir in mason jars so the there is definitely no contact with metal (I had jars with lids before)
I'm trying to think of things I could change to figure out the problem.
Could it be that my kefir grains have picked up a contamination along the way that they never got rid of or could the same have happened for my bottle of calcium chloride or rennet that I keep in the household fridge?
I will try to get some starer culture by next week so I can omit the kefir and see if it really is causing all the problems. *
Any advice is be much appreciated.