Clabber Starter Culture Making Recipe

[Amosunknown]

I would love to know how to make different cheeses without rennet or boughten starters. There is a small cheesery that I found (bonnyclabber) that makes cheese without either of these things, and instead relies on clabber. They use raw goats milk- which is what I use- and allow it to clabber. They use no additives or rennets, and yet can make quite a few different cheeses.

The problem is I  just cant find anything on how to do this! Surely you cheesey folks must know of some process and recipes.

Anyone?

[Amosunknown]

Any body?

[FarmerJd]

I know that you can process your own rennet from a calf's stomach lining and you can get lucky with a wild culture and use it continuously. I guess that is what you mean by "clabber" which is kind of a colloquial term. When I was growing up people used the term to refer to rotten milk with no culture added; just a wild bacteria. Cheese by definition is a product of the curdling effect rennet has on it or a substitute like vinegar. I hope that helps.

[DeejayDebi]

I know about making cheese with claber but these are the only ones I know that don't need rennet - cream cheese, Gjetost, Herregaardsost, Homestead Cheese, Juban, Kochkäse, Laban,  Lemon Cheese, Manouri, Munajuusto, Myseost, Paneer, Quark, riccotta, Suris.

Anything you are looking for?

[linuxboy]

There's a Russian fellow here, Pavel, who has a similar goal of making cheese without rennet. He uses a natural meso starter and makes, basically, a lactic cheese. A lactic cheese is one in which curds are made without rennet, or with very little rennet. You wait until the milk coagulates (< ph 4.6).

You can make many types of lactic cheeses (you call these clabber cheeses), but in the end, they will likely resemble each other. You can't make, for example, an alpine style cheese from overacidified milk. You would have to stick to making a fixed type of curd coagulated by acid, and then finish the cheeses differently (washed, bloomy rind, etc) for different flavors.

Oh, I just realized, you could also make a heat-precipitated cheese. For that, you let the pH drop a bit, not all the way to 4.6, and then heat to at least 180 until the proteins solidify. But then you're basically making a ricotta salata style.

[MrsKK]

Last winter, I made a couple of clabber cheeses that turned into a pretty good parmesan-type of product.

Clabber is NOT rotten milk - it is raw milk that is allowed to sit at room temperature until the naturally occuring organisms in it thicken the milk.  I started a thread about this some time ago:  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1927.0.html

When I made the clabber cheese the first time, it was by accident, as I was intending on a clabber-cultured cheese using rennet to thicken it.  As it was wintertime and the house was quite cool, I cultured 5 gallons of 88 degree milk with 2 cups of clabber, then covered it with a towel.  In the morning, the whole batch was thick and produced a clean break, so I cut the curd and heated it over low heat until the curds were the consistency of scrambled eggs, firm but not completely shrunk (sorry, I did not note my temperatures).

I then drained off the whey and put the curds in a smaller kettle, which was placed in a larger kettle of hot water (water temp 125 degrees).  I allowed this to sit for 2 hours, then stirred in salt (amounts not noted), and pressed in cloth-lined mold at 15 pounds for 2 hours.  Turned and re-dressed the curd, then pressed at 15 lbs overnight.

After drying in the refrigerator for 2 days, I larded and bandaged the cheese and set in cheese cabinet to age, turning every so often.  When I tested it at 3 months, it was a dry, slightly crumbly cheese that was tangy.  I covered it with lard and returned it to the cheese cabinet to age another two months, at which time it had a wonderful, Parmesan-like flavor.  It grates nicely, too.

I also use clabbered milk to make cottage cheese by cutting the curd, then pouring hot water over the curd (about 160-170 degrees).  Gently stir the curd, then drain off the water and pour more hot water over the curd.  Again, gently stir and if the curd is starting to set up you can allow it to sit for about 5 minutes.  If the curd is still quite tender, pour off the water again and pour more hot water over the curd, then allow it to sit.  Drain through a colander and run cold tap water over it when the curd seems to be just right.  If it gets too hot it will melt and be mozzerella-like in texture.  Cottage cheese can be used dry or you can add cream to it.

[Amosunknown]

Last winter, I made a couple of clabber cheeses that turned into a pretty good parmesan-type of product.

Clabber is NOT rotten milk - it is raw milk that is allowed to sit at room temperature until the naturally occuring organisms in it thicken the milk.  I started a thread about this some time ago:  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1927.0.html

When I made the clabber cheese the first time, it was by accident, as I was intending on a clabber-cultured cheese using rennet to thicken it.  As it was wintertime and the house was quite cool, I cultured 5 gallons of 88 degree milk with 2 cups of clabber, then covered it with a towel.  In the morning, the whole batch was thick and produced a clean break, so I cut the curd and heated it over low heat until the curds were the consistency of scrambled eggs, firm but not completely shrunk (sorry, I did not note my temperatures).

I then drained off the whey and put the curds in a smaller kettle, which was placed in a larger kettle of hot water (water temp 125 degrees).  I allowed this to sit for 2 hours, then stirred in salt (amounts not noted), and pressed in cloth-lined mold at 15 pounds for 2 hours.  Turned and re-dressed the curd, then pressed at 15 lbs overnight.

After drying in the refrigerator for 2 days, I larded and bandaged the cheese and set in cheese cabinet to age, turning every so often.  When I tested it at 3 months, it was a dry, slightly crumbly cheese that was tangy.  I covered it with lard and returned it to the cheese cabinet to age another two months, at which time it had a wonderful, Parmesan-like flavor.  It grates nicely, too.

This is exactly what I was looking for. I am going to check out and bookmark that thread you linked me to.

The little pocket production I found is making a few different cheeses. One is a blue cheese using the clabber meathod- not sure what the process is or what natural cultures theyre adding if any. But if theyre making blue cheese couldnt one make feta with said method?

I am still researching just how they make their cheeses, but here's a link to their online blog.
http://www.sullivanspond.com/weblog/2007/06/29/bonnyclabber-country-cheese-process-photos/

[FarmerJd]

MrsKK - I shouldn't have used the term "rotten"; i meant it humorously because that is what most people think of it as . I added the "no culture added just a wild bacteria" to explain it. This was how we always made buttermilk to start with until we got a good one going. I still use this culture for my starter in my cheddar cheese. I never buy culture for it. My grandmothers would debate when i was young about this. One of them thought it was crazy and always used a buttermilk starter while the other one simply let it "rot" or naturally culture with whatever was present.

I saw a recipe one time for a "buttermilk cheese" like what you are talking about and tried it early on before I knew what i was doing. I will try and find it. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. I make buttermilk from raw milk every week in an old fashioned crock and there have been times when I got a wild strain in there that really curdled the milk well, almost like rennet; even thicker than yogurt. i wonder if that is the trick to it- just finding the right bacteria that will do this well. Sorry again for the misrepresentation.

[Cheese Head]

Great discussion, so I understand there are two topics in one here:

• First no-rennet thus only acid coagulated also called lactic type cheese.
• Second using clabber instead of buttermilk or manufactured culture as your mesophilic starter culture to acidify the milk.

I built some info on Acid Coagulated and Rennet Coagulated Cheeses in the Coagulation webpage here. There it says that:

• For acid coagulated cheese, normally get coagulation at pH 4.6-4.7, similar to linuxboy's <4.6.
• If using raw cow's milk and only acid coagulation, then problem of cream separating during long time to lower pH and curdle and thus non-homogeneous cheese. This can be overcome in three ways: Either re-worked to form a more homogeneous mixture (like Mrs KK does in post above), or homogenize milk to stop separation, or by adding a reduced amount of rennet to enable better whey separation and better curd formation which thereby results in less cream separation.
• If using raw goat's milk (like what OP Amosunknown wants to do and is done in the "Bonnyclabber" cheese making link), it has less tendency to separate, thus less need for rennet, although some recipes still call for small amount.

I made a Semi-Lactic cheese using manufactured meso starter culture as I can't make clabber as no raw milk. I used member Alex's Semi-Lactic Cheese recipe/procedure. It is called Semi-Lactic as it uses a reduced amount of rennet to aid the primarily acid coagulation. OK 75% of normal amount of Rennet wasn't that small, but it was at non-normal for rennet lower temperature so I understand I just used the non-enzymatic phase of rennet coagulation and not the second enzymatic phase.

Question, as I used store bought past & homogenized whole cow's milk, I shouldn't have a cream separation problem during the long time to lower pH and curdle. Thus do I need to use any rennet and just have pure acid coagulated lactic type cheese?

[Lachevriere]

Hello,

(Please understand that I do not cast ANY aspersions on making cheese with starters and rennet, and recipes, just because I had several 'proof of concepts' that I undertook!!)

In 1999 I set out to prove that clean raw milk clabbered could be turned in to many different kinds of cheeses, without cooking, rennet, starters, freezing, etc. I called my modern day procedure based on old world techniques, ‘Bonnyclabber’, after the term Bonny Clabber anglicized by the Scots-Irish in America in the 16th century. Bonny Clabber, as you probably know, was a daily staple for country folk with access to raw milk, and simply refers to fresh clabber eaten with cornbread, or sugar, or molasses, etc. This was on the one hand an effort to prove that a healthy buttermilk-type product, (raw milk of any kind is illegal to sell in Virginia), could be made into aged cheese, but on the other hand it was my way to possibly preserve a heritage product in hopes that cultured raw milk products might be legal once again. On the THIRD hand, it was also an effort on my part to be sustainable by producing farmstead cheeses from very clean, very healthy milk with a much lower cost since I wouldn’t need to order lots of industrially produced additives, rennet, etc.

We set about to reduce the thick pamphlet which was the PMO, (pasteurized milk ordinance) dairy requirements that referred to large-scale cow dairies, down to believable and do-able micro-dairy facility. Because I wanted to make raw milk cheese here, I wanted our facility to reflect high standards such as Grade A milk handling. We do not have a pasteurizer on-site, but because the cheese is made from fresh warm milk in a Grade-A built facility, we can claim that the milk is handled Grade A. In other words, that is a distinction usually used for those who are going to bottle milk, after chilling and pasteurizing large quantities. We don’t do that, but we handle the milk cleanly and carefully for our cheeses.

There’s some information on our site, but I am hoping that my book, The Bonnyclabber Way will be in print VERY soon. This will chronicle our efforts over the last ten years to prove that raw milk can be handled cleanly in a sustainable micro-dairy facility, and that many cheeses can be made from clabber by different rind treatments, and affinage.  I make them fresh all the way to hard, washed rind, or cloth-bound, or herbed, oil rubbed, beeswaxed, ashed, and on and on.  All Cheesemaking is artistry and science, based on observation and practice.

Happy Cheesing,
Rona Myers Sullivan

PS.  I hope I can get the book out soon to clear up some things in detail.  Until then I have sent many articles to Dairy Goat Journal on Sustainable Cheesemaking, and if you search my name on there you can read the archives.

[linuxboy]

I am still researching just how they make their cheeses, but here's a link to their online blog.

There are two ways to make curd from clabbered milk. One, you wait until the pH drops enough (~4.6) to coagulate the milk, then you drain and press the curd, or heat, drain, and press. Or two, you wait a bit until the milk is thicker, but not quite clabbered, and precipitate the proteins by heat and the help of the lactic acid that's built up.

From those two basic procedures, you produce the curd. The cheese flavors after that depend on what you do and how you age. You could mix in herbs. You could wash the rind. You could inoculate the rind with mold, coat with ash, wrap in bandage, etc. All these different practices are done after the curd is made and are in the category of finishing and affinage. Your cheeses will taste different, but will still be based on lactic-precipitated or heat-precipitated principles.

[Cheese Head]

Rona/Lachevriere, welcome to the forum and great background info, thank you! Good luck with your book!

To others, on the BonnyClabber cheese link above I left a message for Rona asking if she would like to join us and comment in this thread, and here she is !

Linuxboy, thanks for the clarity.

[linuxboy]

I understand I just used the non-enzymatic phase of rennet coagulation and not the second enzymatic phase.

Question, as I used store bought past & homogenized whole cow's milk, I shouldn't have a cream separation problem during the long time to lower pH and curdle. Thus do I need to use any rennet and just have pure acid coagulated lactic type cheese?

Hi John,

Don't want to hijack the thread, but wanted to reply to your question. I think you meant by the two phases first the cleaving and then the joining. They're both enzymatic in the sense that rennet acts as catalyst. The small amount of rennet in a lactic cheese makes for a better mouthfeel because it does help to set a curd, albeit a weak one. If you just drained a clabbered milk, you'd have something similar to a yogurt cheese like labneh. So you could do it both ways, with rennet and without, but the cheeses would turn out differently.

[MrsKK]

"... i meant it humorously because that is what most people think of it as..."

FarmerJD - no offense taken, but I did want to clarify, as there are a lot of people who are incredibly prejudiced against raw milk and the products that can be made from it, mostly due to being very uneducated about raw milk.

AmosUnknown - once you get started on making cheeses with clabber, please let us know how they turn out for you.

[FarmerJd]

FarmerJD - no offense taken, but I did want to clarify, as there are a lot of people who are incredibly prejudiced against raw milk and the products that can be made from it, mostly due to being very uneducated about raw milk.

I totally agree! Anytime someone discovers that I drink unpasteurized milk or make cheese form it, I always have to go into this long explanation of the science and reasoning behind pasteurization and the laws, etc. And explaining that letting it sit overnight and "rot" to form buttermilk for my kids to drink the next morning always gets a gasp or two. Thanks again for being easy on me.