Author Topic: meso and thermo cultures from scratch  (Read 8027 times)

valiant4truth

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meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« on: August 17, 2010, 01:08:54 PM »
Kinda new to the cheese making realm, but love it! Have read and reread so many sites and posts............

I like to do everything myself at least once, and know that it is easier to buy the cultures, and may eventually do that, but would like to at least know how to and do it once for myself. So, can anyone give me a recipe for a meso and thermo culture from scratch? Not having to buy yogurt or buttermilk?

I get two gallons raw milk a day from my Jersey's.

Also, what about kefir grains from scratch? Just seems to me that these grains had to have started somewhere, somehow, so why can't we reproduce this process at home?

Sailor Con Queso

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2010, 07:07:10 PM »
A "recipe" ???? You're talking about pure bacteria cultures with very specific species and variations. Do you have a microbiology lab???  If not, that's beyond ambitious.  ::)


valiant4truth

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2010, 07:24:06 PM »
Well, what I mean is, I have read you can do a meso starter from buttermilk, and you can make buttermilk from raw milk, I guess some call it clabbered milk, and use that as a meso starter?

but for a thermo starter, you have to buy the yogurt? This is what is confusing me, because if they did it in the past, without all the labs, etc, how do I do this at home, starting from raw milk?

and am I right about the meso starter? and what about kefir grains? How do you get those?

My thought is this, lets say the economy takes a dive, no internet, or something like that, and I can't go online and purchase the starter packets. What then? I want to be able to do it at home...... are you understanding?

mtncheesemaker

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2010, 11:00:14 PM »
You can make clabbered milk from raw milk for sure, then make butter and the liquid left over is buttermilk. I use it for a meso starter for most cheeses. Then use a little buttermilk to clabber your next batch.
To make yogurt from scratch, I think you have to live in Bulgaria to get the right wild bugs. :)
Kefir, I don't know how that got started. But I know people that have kept their kefir grains going for over 20 years.

Sailor Con Queso

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2010, 11:08:58 PM »
I understand perfectly. You can do "mother cultures" at home, (sort of like an ongoing starter for sourdough bread) but you can't do a true starter culture "from scratch". Without a sophisticated lab, it can't be done. However, raw milk contains natural bacteria that will work without any additional starter bacteria. Lots of traditional European cheeses are made this way. In fact some of the registered cheeses do not allow the use of additional starter. HOWEVER... every geographical location in the world has different botanical and bacterial populations. So the cheese produced naturally in one location may turn out entirely different just 50 miles away. That's one reason we can never truly reproduce a great cheese without using exactly the same milk.

So why not just let raw milk coagulate and do it's thing? 1- You have no idea what natural bacteria are present. You may get cheese, but what kind??? 2- The natural bacterial population is pretty low and gives contaminants the opportunity to take over. By using "starter packets" you know what to expect and the higher concentration will outcompete contaminants.

I suggest you read up on mother cultures.

linuxboy

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2010, 11:36:53 PM »
but for a thermo starter, you have to buy the yogurt? This is what is confusing me, because if they did it in the past, without all the labs, etc, how do I do this at home, starting from raw milk?

By heating past the lysis point of meso bacteria but not thermo bacteria. It happens naturally in farmstead scenarios by either leaving milk out in the full hot sun, which kills meso bacteria, or by heating in a copper vat and then retaining some of the whey to use for backslopping.

This was before the advent of microbiological techniques. After, as Sailor pointed out, it's just normal pure culture isolation of commonly used starters.
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and am I right about the meso starter? and what about kefir grains? How do you get those?

Their origin is lost, but if you somehow had all the bacteria and yeasts together, they could form a grain. I suspect originally, milk had gone bad and was left, and then someone smelled it and it smelled like sour milk, so it was eaten. And in the end some grains were left over, and some superstition likely made a person add more milk to the grains. Well until the 1920s it was impossible to get kefir grains. They were obtained by this crazy way from the prince in the Caucassus involving a kidnapped Russian industrial beautiful spy (not even kidding).
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My thought is this, lets say the economy takes a dive, no internet, or something like that, and I can't go online and purchase the starter packets. What then? I want to be able to do it at home...... are you understanding?

Then you culture raw milk and make whatever cheese you can. For thermo, you have to kill off the meso and it will form thermo culture. But honestly, like for yogurt, it's not really thermo that acidifies, it's strep thermophilus, which is a hybrid kind of bacteria. It's not like lactococcus because it tolerates higher temps, and it acidifies faster.

The other way that thermo cultures are isolated is again naturally. L bulgaricus, for example, can tolerate extremes of acid development. So when meso cells start to die at 4.5, bulgaricus will keep producing acid until 3.5. L helveticus isn't ever really created in a farmstead setting because initial concentrations of helveticus for common thermo cheeses is pretty low, just naturally ocurring or from a backslop. Helveticus grows and multiplies as the cheese ages.

MrsKK

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2010, 02:28:47 AM »
Like you, I want to know how to do things, just in case the current system falls apart and I need to know how to do it. 

I started a thread about a year ago on how to make good clabber that can be used for starting cheeses.  Here's the link:  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1927.msg14271.html#msg14271

Let me know if you have any questions that I can help you with.  As for thermophilic, I'm using yogurt - I start mine from store-bought greek yogurt, though, so I guess that's cheating.

littlemilkqueen

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2010, 12:49:38 PM »
Last year i used clabbered milk for a meso culture and it was great not having to buy the culture and it worked every time. I am starting some more now.
I do not know about thermo. but I do make kefir every day with kefir grains.  I have only bought mine from this site. http://kefirlady.com/
she also sends along a lot of information about how to work with them too. I love the kefir!!! I always throw it in a blender with frozen fruit and a bit of sugar (so kids drink it LOL) Good luck!

Mondequay

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2010, 01:07:22 PM »
If it all goes south, your kefir grains will still be working for you - no refrigeration necessary! If you'd like some grains, message me your shipping info and I can send you some. My kefir grains are growing like crazy this summer!

Offline DeejayDebi

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #9 on: August 22, 2010, 05:36:21 AM »
It is a bit more difficult to relicate various cheeses from "homemade" mesophilic (yogurt or clabbered milk based) and thermophilic (buttermilk based) cultures at home  than it is to used commercially produced cultures but it can be done. I have done it rather sucessfully for some 27 years.

Don't rain someones parade Sailor if they want to do things for themselves. There is more than one way to do things. My way is not your and your way is not mine. That does not make either of us right or wrong just different. Anyone can make cheese from a commercial culture and using sophisticated equipment. Try doing it from an old fashoined homemade culture sometime the way our forefathers did it. They were real cheesemakers.

Your comments of late have been very harsh and several members have brought it to my attention. Please try to be more understanding of other peoples feelings and try to encourage not discourage members of the forum.

Sailor Con Queso

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Re: meso and thermo cultures from scratch
« Reply #10 on: August 22, 2010, 07:09:28 AM »
If I was harsh or negative, I apologize. Certainly didn't mean to be. We all learn from constructive criticism, so please let me know if it happens again.

And I have enormous respect for traditional techniques. I too love doing things myself and have made several cheeses using either buttermilk (meso) or yogurt (thermo) and they turned out great. I have been producing yogurt every week from the same mother culture for well over a year. I understand old world techniques and also understand the limitations. French alpine milk for example contains naturally occurring Propionic bacteria, our milk does not. So if we want to make Swiss style cheeses, for most people that means using a "store bought" culture. I don't see any way around that.

However, valiants original statement was...

 "I like to do everything myself at least once, and know that it is easier to buy the cultures, and may eventually do that, but would like to at least know how to and do it once for myself. So, can anyone give me a recipe for a meso and thermo culture from scratch? Not having to buy yogurt or buttermilk?"

Maybe I read that wrong, but to me that means pure cultures that can't easily be produced at home.

So if he/she doesn't buy yogurt or buttermilk, tell me how he/she is going to start from scratch and make a safe, predictable cheese that can be reproduced ??? How is he/she going to make Swiss? Brie? Camembert?