Parmesan

[ibejaminben]

So I want to try and make parmesan and I have a few questions. I have my own cow. And I use her milk for all of my cheese making. However. I have had her butter fat tested and she has a 4.9 percent butter fat, which is good for some things. Not so good for others. I have an antique cream seperator with no directions. Its a Mccormick Deering 1940's cream separator that still separates the milk. But without directions I really have nothing to go on. I don't know what percent my milk with be when I'm done. So my question is how do you guys, and gals recomend i get the proper milk fat for making parmesan?

[linuxboy]

Parmesan does well with butterfat below 2.5%. If you skim off all the cream, the milk should be somewhere around 2%, so you should be fine.

I don't know if the milk used to make parmesan in Parma is tested beforehand, but before they did testing, they just skimmed off the cream and used the skimmed milk. So just do that or use a mechanical separator and you should be fine.

[ibejaminben]

Thanks- Good to know. I just didn't know what the butter fat content of the milk would be after i used my machine to separate the cream.

[DeejayDebi]

I just set the milk in the refrigerator for a few hours and slowly pour off the cream.