Why ladle curds? - Stilton

[MarkShelton]

I don't quite understand the methodology behind ladling the curds into a cheesecloth lined colander instead of cutting them. I am midway through my first stilton, and I have just finished this process, and now the curds are just sitting in the colander under the whey. What is it about this step that is even necessary? I watched the video on how it is commercially made, and it shows them cutting the curd and just letting it set in the whey.
Why am I going through all the trouble to get it into a cheesecloth in a colander?

[humble_servant7]

Good thread.

I've always wanted to know hwy people recommend ladling curds instead of cutting them too.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Stilton curds are not cooked and therefore are very "fragile". If you cut it into cubes like most hard cheeses, your yield will go way down. More importantly, the curds will lose whey too quickly and slow down acidification. Ladeling into a colander in a pot allows it to drain slowly and the whey that accumulates continues to provide an ongoing "food" source for the starter bacteria. The curd mass continues to drain and as the pH drops, the curds will start knitting together. If you remove the whey, the curd mass will not acidify properly.

[Brie]

My experience has been that ladling curds as opposed to cutting yields less butterfat release from the curd; and so a much richer cheese. As little handling as possible with these soft curd cheeses is the optimum.

[MarkShelton]

Ok. Well I'm on the second day now, and when I left them last night pressing under light weight, the curd really reminded me of ricotta. This morning, it was much firmer, almost elastic on the outside, and kind of sticky/pasty on the inside. I don't have a probe pH meter  to measure the acidity, so I'm really just blindly following the recipe. I milled and salted (1tbs per gallon of original milk) and gently filled my mold. Now I'll be flipping every 15 min for the next few hours. Am I on the right track?

[Sailor Con Queso]

Absolutely. Maybe a little heavy on the salt. I use 3 tablespoons of a coarse pickling salt for a 5 gallon batch. But that is an individual taste preference. Otherwise, so far so good Mark. I keep my Stiltons at room temperature and flip for 3 or 4 days. Then I pop it out of the hoop, put them into a rippening box with high humidity and move it to the garage where it's around 58F. I always have a raging blue bloom within a few days after that. (Molds love cool damp places.) Then start piercing.

If you like blues, you are going to get hooked on making them.

[MarkShelton]

The recipe called for 2tbs and it was made with 2gal of milk. I used 5gal milk plus some cream (enough to completely fill the pot, raising the milkfat to 5.1%) so I figured 5tbs was good. It was coarse Kosher salt too, which is less dense than flake salt. Still maybe still a little high, but something to taste and adjust for the next batch.

[Majoofi]

I had the same question. The first (and only so far) Stilton I tried to make I followed the direction exactly until I realized you need one monster colander to drain the curds. Of course they didn't fit so cutting the curds in the colander, but that still didn't get me enough room so I ended up dumping them back into the whey and letting them bleed into the warm whey. When finally there was enough room they wouldn't knit together (ugh) so I finally pressed the wheel under fifty pounds. I came out really nice but bore no resemblance to Stilton. 

[MarkShelton]

hahaha, yes I ran into that also. I didn't plan ahead that well, and so I was scrambling to find things to ladle the curd into. I started with a nylon draining bag, and when that was full, I went to the colander lined with a cheesecloth. When that filled up, I started filling my 8" tomme mold. I still had about 1/3 of the curds left so I made another go at all three, filling the space from the curds shrinking. At the end, I poured out a few cups of curd because everything was overflowing.
I think I'll do a smaller batch next time. It completely filled my 6" SS mold and a 4" camembert mold when it came time to hoop the milled curd. I think I can cut down to 3 1/2 gal plus cream and have just enough to fill the one mold.
50 lbs? Was there any blue-ing in the interior?

[Majoofi]

50 lbs? no mine was two pounds. After the fiasco of forming I thought I'd just let it be white. It did blue a bit round the edges.

[MarkShelton]

Oh sorry, I meant 50lbs pressing weight. My thought was that you pressed all the air space out of the cheese, so you probably wouldn't get any blue-ing in the interior.
A 50# cheese would be a lot...

[FarmerJd]

Guys when I made my "blue stilton wannabe" last week with 15 gallons, I used every container with holes in it that I could find and I had bags hanging everywhere! Very little pre-planning. My family and house looked like a circus. What a mess! I will definitely be better prepared next time. My 24 gallon cheddars never made this big a mess.

[MarkShelton]

Certainly not! Didn't take as long to make either, with processing the curd for 2 days, flipping another 4 days before even un-molding, scraping it all smooth and THEN you get to age it. Even my traditional cheddars only take 8 hours!

[MarkShelton]

This better be one darn tasty cheese!

[MarkShelton]

Ok, now after 2 days of flipping every 4-8 hours, it seems that the whey has stopped draining. The recipe calls for 4 days of draining, but I don't think any more whey is going to come out. Perhaps the oversalting hastened the whey drainage I gave the unmolding a test run (pulled the mold about halfway off, then slid back down) and it seems to be holding together pretty well. Should I unmold now and smooth the sides down? I'm afraid that if I let it dry out too much, that won't be possible, but I don't want it to crumble on its own weight if its not ready.