Thanks for the cheeses guys!
The recipe was based on the first thing that came up when Googling "making Emmental cheese" - the one on the Cultures for Health site. There were just a few things I did differently, like multiplying the recipe to about 20 liters of milk for a chance at better eye development in a larger cheese. In this case the cheese was a high as it was round. 8 liters of the milk used was whole homogenized because I didn't have enough 2%. It was all just cheap supermarket milk.
I used a heaping quarter teaspoon of PS, not measuring too carefully. I also used thermo C culture because that's the only thermo I had on hand at the time. I gave almost no time for "ripening" the cultures (just enough to fully hydrate after mixing), and started cutting the curd the minute I got a clean break. I didn't cook the curd all the way to 120 F, because by the time it was slowly brought up to 115 F with near constant whisk stirring, the curd seemed way dry enough. Any more and I would be making Parmesan! I don't have a pH meter, but for sure the finished pH level was on the high side after immediately pressing for only 8 hours. The tiny bit of whey left expelled after the last pressing still tasted sweet. My pH tongue meter never lies!
This recipe calls for a 24 hour dip in saturated brine for a 2 gallon cheese. That's ridiculous. I brined mine 12 hours (if even that, maybe 10?) for a 5 gallon cheese. Propionic isn't incredibly salt tolerant, not nearly as much as Lactobacillus is. After pressing, it went immediately to the cheese cave @ 12 degrees C uncovered in it's cheese box to dry out. Then for that first week, partially covered and wiped almost daily with a weak brine solution in the cheese cave. After a week, I moved the box to the top of the fridge in the kitchen and just monitored it for dryness, adjusting the cover accordingly. Mold never showed up thank goodness. Within 7 days, it had grown to the point where I decided to vacuum pack it because I was worried about it bursting. I should have taken a pic at that point! I then put it back in the cheese cave, where it actually grew a bit more I think over the first month. And that's it! Another cheezy adventure! Hahaha