Author Topic: Butterkase!  (Read 2585 times)

Offline gathwaegl

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Butterkase!
« on: November 17, 2017, 04:18:02 AM »
@Danbo, your recipe is magical.

We have signups at work to bring in a treat every Friday. And tomorrow is my day! I decided to make a cheese and bring it in and I've been wanting to try my hand at a butterkase for a good long while. I grew up in Germany and ate a good bit of Butterkase while I was there; I miss it here in the states.


I was able to get my hands on some local milk and i was off to the races.




My setup




Ready for the cave.



I aged it for a little over two weeks and opened it today for a taste test before taking it in tomorrow for work. It tastes amazing. I'll be sure to post more pictures tomorrow but if you haven't tried Danbo's Butterkase recipe, I'd 100% recommend it!


I forgot to take pictures while I was cutting it, but I'll take some pictures of the spread tomorrow and share them here.

@justifiedgaines

rkampa

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2019, 11:45:03 AM »
Can you share your recipe for butterkase?  Looking for a new cheese to make.

Offline gathwaegl

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2019, 04:07:27 PM »
I attached the recipe that I use. Another member, Danbo came up with it.
@justifiedgaines

curiouser_alice

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2019, 02:50:49 AM »
I will have to adjust this recipe.  Will it really be ready to eat in two weeks?  I think I have to try it.

Mina

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2020, 09:48:41 PM »
Hello

I see that Danbo's recipe is for a 24l batch.  Has anyone converted to a smaller batch...say 3-4 gallons?  I'm sure I can do the math, but the amounts for the cultures are in grams and I kinda like it in spoon measurements if possible.

Offline mikekchar

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2020, 11:27:59 PM »
I would do it for you, but I've never been able to view that PDF.  I'm not sure why, but no software I own will open it.  If you can put the list of ingredients in a post here, I'll calculate the equivalents in teaspoons.

Mina

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2020, 01:10:31 PM »
Thanks mikekchar
here is the basic list
per 24 L milk
1.3 g TA60
.2 g LH100
.15 g Geo

Offline MacGruff

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2020, 01:40:20 PM »
Here is the complete "dump" of the recipe:

Milk, cultures etc.
24 l of organic whole milk 4%
1.3 g Choozit TA60
0.2 g Choozit LH100
0.15 g Geotricium (optional)
4 ml Calcium chloride 30% diluted in 200 ml of cooled boiled water
5 ml Calf rennet diluted in 200 ml of cooled boiled water
8 liters of boiled water held ready at 53 C
Heavy brine (4 liters of boiled cool water, 1.2 kg salt, 10 ml CaCl, 10 ml 7% white vinegar)
20 cm mould

Recipe

Add diluted CaCl to milk and stir (PH at this stage 6.59).
Slowly start heating milk to 39 C (takes around 30 minutes).
When the milk reaches 39 C springle cultures over milk and let it hydrate for 5 minutes and then mix cultures with milk for two
minutes.
When the PH has dropped 0.1 (takes around 40 minutes) add rennet mixed with 200 ml of water (just 25 strokes with a
skimmer). Start timer for spinning bowl test. Floc.factor: 3.5. If not using spinning bowl test then go for 50 minutes and a clean
break.
Cut curd in 1.5-2 cm cubes.
Rest for 10 mins.
Slowly stir for 10 mins.
Rest for 5 minutes (PH at this stage: 6.28).
Washing cycle (total of 8 minutes):
Each minute: Remove 1 liter of whey and replace with 1 liter of 53 C water. Stir.
Repeat until 8 liters of whey has been replaced with 8 liters of 53 C water.
End temp. should be around 41 C.
Stir for 2 minutes.
Rest for 10 minutes (PH at this stage 6.38).
Pour some of the whey over mould, follower and cheese cloth to heat and adjust their PH.
Use 5 minutes to drain the whey from the curd before putting it in the mould. Run your fingers through the curd several times
to get rid of excess whey.
Pack the mould with a cheesecloth and the curd.

Pressing

Flip and redress cheese between presses. Pressing at room temp around 20 C.
First press: 0.6 PSI for 30 minutes (20 cm mould: 30 pounds)
Second press: 1.4 PSI for 30 minutes (20 cm mould: 70 pounds)
Third press: 2.0 PSI for 1.5 hours (20 cm mould: 100 pounds)
Fourth press: 2.6 PSI for 2 hours (20 cm mould: 130 pounds)
Fourth press: 2.6 PSI for 30 minutes (20 cm mould: 130 pounds)
If there are cheesecloth marks on the cheese the last press can be performed without cheesecloth at 3.5 PSI (20 cm mould: 175
pounds).

Adjusting pressing weights

Remember to adjust the pressing weights if using a different mould size. A mould with a diameter of 8 inches has an area of 50
square inches (1 psi = 50 pounds). A mould with a diameter of 4 inches has an area of 13 square inches (1 psi = 13 pounds).
If you need to calculate how much weight to use on your mould here is how:
Mould area in square inches: (mouldDiameterInInches/2)2 x 3.1416. Example (mould diameter 8 inches): (8/2)2 x 3.1416 = 50,3
square inches
Pressing weight needed: RecipePSI * MouldAreaInSquareInches. Example 0.6 x 50.3 = 30.18

Brining and waxing

Place in brine for 9.5 hours at 13 C (springle cheese with salt on side facing up).
Flip cheese and leave it in the brine for 9.5 hours at 13 C (springle cheese with salt on side facing up).
Leave the cheese to dry on a draining mat to dry at around 8 C 70-75 rel. hum (if possible). Move cheese to cave. Turn cheese
one to two times daily while ageing at 13 C 80-85 rel. hum. for 14-28 days. The cheese can be waxed after a couple of days when
surface Is dry enough but because the cheese is relatively soft you have to inspect the wax for cracks every 4 days or so.

(c) Danbo



I would be interested in a conversion to smaller batches myself. I am only brave enough to try about 2 Gallons at a time - so 8 Litters.

Thanks!


Offline mikekchar

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2020, 07:36:31 AM »
I totally forgot to do this!  I apologise.

As usually, it's way more complicated than it looks.  When the manufacturers make DVI cultures, they freeze dry them.  This is a variable process.  Some of the culture will inevitably die in the process.  Every time they do it, they will get a different result.  What they do is take the resultant culture and test it to see how fast it acidifies the milk.  When they compare it to their baseline, they can see how much to use.  However, the amount is *completely* different each time.  You can't add 1.3g of TA60 from one batch and expect it to work the same as 1.3g from another batch.  It might be off by a factor of 2 or even more!

Because of this, they sell DVI cultures in units called DCU (Direct Culture Unit).  1 DCU will inoculate about ~20 liters of milk (~5 gallons).  Ideally, what you do when you buy a bag of DVI culture is that you weigh it.  A typical package of TA60 contains 50 DCU (enough for ~250 gallons, or ~1000 liters of milk).  If you want to make 4 liters (about 1 gallon), then you need 1/250th of the total amount.  Of course this is practically impossible to measure :-).  This is actually why I always make starter cultures, even though it often isn't recommended by the manufacturer.  I make a yogurt from some random amount of culture and then use about 15g of yogurt for each liter of milk.  For me, this is the only way to measure starter culture and not get a completely random amount.

But having said that, by looking at Danbo's recipe, we can see that he's ripening the milk at 39C for 40 minutes.  He's got a total coagulation time of 50 minutes with a 3.5x flocculation multiplier.  This means a flocculation time of 14 minutes -- which is pretty much exactly what you would expect for milk that is "normally" acidified at that temperature (maybe just a bit slow).  So we can surmise that he's using about 1 DCU of acidifying cultures for 24 liters of milk.

If we look closely at this picture:


You can see that it contains 9.6g of culture for 50 DCU.  1 DCU would weigh 0.19g.  So maybe Danbo has a version that is almost 10x weaker than this package.  Or maybe he's using almost 10x as much.  Or... it's a typo.  My bet is on the last option.  1.3g of starter culture would be an insane amount for 24 l of milk.  But it *is* still possible, I guess...

Here is a picture of an LH100 package:


You can see that 50 DCU is 25g.  That means that 1 DCU is 0.5g.

So possibly he is using 0.5 DCU of the TA60 and 0.5 DCU of the LH100 and that his TA60 is just a bit heavier than the one in the picture.

If you wax this cheese, you do not need the geo.  The amount you need is really relaxed, so I wouldn't worry about it, but cheesemaking.com suggest 1/8 tsp for 4-8 gallons.  It is good for 4-8 gallons per DCU, so they are assuming that 1 DCU is about 1/8 tsp.

Now, having said all that, I have lucked into a recipe on cheesemaking.com which has tsp and gram amounts for the cultures we are talking about:

https://cheesemaking.com/collections/recipes/products/beaufort-cheese-making-recipe

In that, they say 0.7g of TA61 (the same as TA60, I think) is 3/8 tsp, and 0.2g of LH100 is 1/16 tsp (which is a recipe for 12.5 gallons -- just over twice what this butterkase is making).    So this Beaufort is using about 3.5 DCU of TA60 and 0.4 DCU of LH100 for 47 liters of milk.  Since that's a lot more DCU that we would expect, I want to sanity check it.  Their Gruyere recipe uses only 1/8 tsp of TA60 for 30 liters (or about 1.2 DCU for 30 liters).  I just mention this to show that the Beaufort is using about the same ratio to our Butterkase as it is to the Gruyere.  Beaufort is 0.08 DCU per liter, Gruyere is 0.04 DCU per liter and my imagination of the Butterkase is 0.045 DCU per liter -- so I think I'm in the right ballpart -- the Beaufort is just using a heck of a lot of culture for some reason.

TL;DR:

Revised recipe
22 liters (6 US gallons)
0.13g (0.68 DCU) (1/14 tsp) TA60
0.2g (0.4 DCU) (1/16 tsp) LH100
0.15g (0.5 DCU) (1/16 tsp) Geotrichum
4ml (4/5 tsp) Calcium chloride solution (30%)
5 ml (1000 IMCU) (1 tsp) single strength rennet

Yeah, yeah, I know... Where are you going to get a 1/14 tsp measure... ;-)  But, well.. you get the idea...

Yeah, yeah... where are you going to get

Mina

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Re: Butterkase!
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2020, 02:23:46 PM »
uh...thanks.
sorry it took me this long to read your response.  and that is one heck of a response.  truly appreciate the time it took you to do that for me.  my brain still hurts  ;)