Ricotta - please help

[Alex]

Last weekend I made several cheeses and got about 9-10 liters of whey out of them. About half pasteurized and half not. I added 1 liter pasteurized milk at 72 deg C and 1-1/4 cups of vinegar at 90 deg C. The result was about 1/4 cup of a semolina flour like substance on the bottom of the vat.
That's not the first time I make ricotta, but the first time I get such a disappointing result.
I'll be glad to hear any clues from you.
TIA

[mtncheesemaker]

Alex, the only thing I can think of:
Was the whey "fresh"? The books all say to use it ASAP; I don't know what the time limit is. I always do it as soon as I can and have always had good results.
Pam

[DeejayDebi]

I seem to get better results from romano, mozzarella, typre provalone cheeses. I never make it the same night I let it sit and acidify overnight before making the ricotta. Ricotta was actually origially made from the whey of romano cheese when the cheese makers had more whey than they could dispose of.  Trying to find something to do with it someone cooked the whey and found curds developed in the pot and riccotta was born.

Seeing that the ricotta curd come from left over protein in the whey I guess you come say you have gotten the most from your milk.

[Alex]

Part of the whey is from unpasteurized Limburger, kept in the fridge 24 hours. The other part is from 36 hours rippening lactic cheese. This one was greenish transparent like it should be after making ricotta. With this one you might be right Debi, may be the whey was "empty". May be by mixing the two I spoiled the whole stuff.

Pam, part of the books say to use the whey ASAP, and part say as Debi said, to let acidify overnight. By this, it is not supposed that vinegar to be added. I always made my ricotta with vinegar.

[Cheese Head]

Alex, I got similar flour type Ricotta here from whey from making Dill Havarti, still not sure why.

[DeejayDebi]

Whey from acid-set cheeses cannot produce ricotta, because all of the albumin protein has precipitated out in the original cheese.

Whey contains little protein, since most of it was removed during the production of the original rennet-set cheese, from which the whey resulted.

The whey is heated, sometimes with additional acid like vinegar, to curdle out the remaining protein in the whey. The whey is heated to a near boiling temperature, much hotter than during the original production of the cheese to cause the reminants to pop.


Some ricotta should be produced from other types of cheese whey. I do find that the best yield of ricota comes from the cheeses with the most curd dust (the tiny little cheese reminents when cutting tiny curds).

[Quesa]

I figured this one out by myself.

The Ricotta from meso cheese whey, came out not so good.

The Ricotta from thermo cheese whey, came out great.

Well, at least it worked like that with me.