Curd won't melt

[MrsKK]

I only had one really bad citric acid mozzarella and it was using milk that was about 8 days old.  I have raw milk from my cow and thought it would be a good way to use the old stuff.  WRONG!

Part of your problem may have been from your rennet being weak.  I just recently bought rennet powder from http://thecheesemaker.com/supplies.htm.  It is supposed to be stored in the freezer and keeps indefinitely, which is really attractive to me as I have about 2-4 months a year when I don't make cheese.  No sense in liquid rennet sitting around getting weak during that time.

Don't give up - once you master mozzarella you'll never go back to storebought.  As many people have said here, mozz is not an easy cheese to make, but many of us start out with it.  It's just too tempting to have a cheese you can use right away, I think.

[corkybstewart]

This is my first post here, I hope I'm not re-asking the same old thing.  My first 2 batches of mozzarella were excellent, but my next two basically sucked.  I used regular whole milk the first 2 times but then I switched to organic and my cheese has the consistency of cottage cheese but a little firmer.  Is it the milk?  We'll eat it and enjoy it, but I'm kind of a perfectionist so before I move to more complicated cheeses I want to know what I did wrong.
Another question:  I heat my milk in a large stainless bowl inside a pot of water.  The temp in the middle of the curd shows about 105, but the temp of the whey adjacent to the wall of the bowl is over 125F.  Where should I be measuring the temperature so that I'm adding rennet at the right time or letting it rest?

[DeejayDebi]

This is my first post here, I hope I'm not re-asking the same old thing.  My first 2 batches of mozzarella were excellent, but my next two basically sucked.  I used regular whole milk the first 2 times but then I switched to organic and my cheese has the consistency of cottage cheese but a little firmer.  Is it the milk?  We'll eat it and enjoy it, but I'm kind of a perfectionist so before I move to more complicated cheeses I want to know what I did wrong.

I don't know why but most of the organic milks are ultra high temperature or (UHT) pasteurized products. They could also be labeled Extended Shelf Life or (ESL) which is the same thing. They will not make cheese. The really high temperatures which allow the milk to last indefinately also distroy everything in the milk.

Another question:  I heat my milk in a large stainless bowl inside a pot of water.  The temp in the middle of the curd shows about 105, but the temp of the whey adjacent to the wall of the bowl is over 125F.  Where should I be measuring the temperature so that I'm adding rennet at the right time or letting it rest?  There are no curds when you add rennet. Measure the milk temperature, then the whey temperature. If you have that big a temperature difference the whey will eventually get that high which you don't want when adding rennet. You may be transfering the cooking pot heat directly to the bowl like a heat sink. That could explain the extra hot bowl tempeatures.