Ripening Of Buttermilk Prior To Use

[9mmruger]

Newly registered cheese maker with a question.  I have been reading the threads and found that I should have been ripening my store bought buttermilk prior to adding to my milk.   As I was not doing this, would that explain why all of my cheeses tasted basically the same?  I certainly am learning lots more now that I am moved and can begin making cheese again.

[linuxboy]

Where did you read that? Do you mean adding the buttermilk to milk and letting the milk ripen to build up acidity before adding rennet? Store buttermilk is already fermented, like a starter. Letting is sit around to ripen by itself would just kill off bacteria.

[9mmruger]

Maybe I am miss-interpreting what I am reading.  Thanks for responding.  Here is the thread:  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3984.0.html

It seemed to make sense to me anyway, but I don't want to do something I don't need to do either.

Thanks again

kim

[linuxboy]

Oh, do you mean John's post about buttermilk viscosity having to do with ripeness? That's kind of true in the sense that mesophilic bacteria will stop around a pH of 4.5, and milk coagulates fully at a pH of 4.6, so once it's done, it will be as thick as it will get. But it's not like letting it sit around will make buttermilk thicker. Make sense? Ripeness is a bit of a vague term to me.

That thread is about how much cultured buttermilk to use. You could make cultured buttermilk yourself by using buttermilk as a starter and milk, and letting it coagulate. What you're doing is letting the bacteria multiply, that's what you're after. And those bacteria need to be as viable as possible when you add them to the milk to make cheese.

Think about it this way, you need to add bacteria that acidify milk when making cheese. The buttermilk has bacteria. And so you use the buttermilk as a starter, add it to milk, and make your cheese. You need to use the freshest starter possible.

[9mmruger]

That being said then, all I should really need to do with store bought buttermilk is let it come to room temp and add it to the milk, rather than adding cold directly from the fridge?

[DeejayDebi]

1) You should never add cold buttermilk to your warmed milk.
2) Yo should it the buttermilk cultures time to multiply first. As mentioned in the thread most store bought butter milks does not have enough bacteria to insure good inoculation of your milk.