Pressing - Cheese Sticking to Cloth & Chunks Breaking Off

[newcommunitycheesemaker]

I am a very novice cheesemaker, and decided to try to make parmesan style cheese.
I have tried twice, and each time when I take the cheese out of the press, lumps fall off, bits stick to the cloth and a lot of cracks form. Mould gets in through the cracks, and it starts to go furry. (After I have floated the cheese in brine for a week)
Any ideas on what I am doing wrong are much appreciated.
Thanks

[Gina]

I can't answer your question, but before I make any new cheese, I read as many threads here on the particular type so I can hopefully prevent some problems - though in the beginning you cant prevent them all. 

While my first parmesan was a failure (think tall hockey puck), my more recent attempts look and smell good.

Perhaps you could read some of the previous threads here on parmesan and they might answer your question. Look over the titles listed in the link below. You will find a wealth of good information there. Also use the 'search', found in the upper right corner.

http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,73.0.html

[DeejayDebi]

Sure would help if we had a picture ...

[KosherBaker]

1. How many pounds of pressure are you applying?
2. How long is the cheese in the press?
3. How large is your cheese wheel?

Also if you can specify what recipe you are using, either from a book or online that'll help the gurus around here to point you in the right direction.

[newcommunitycheesemaker]

Thanks for your replies kosher baker, gina and deejay debi.
I am using a recipe from the cheesemaking book by paul peacock,
I have been using 100 litres of milk, (it pains me to say, what a waste!)
 warming the milk to 40 degrees C, adding the rennet (3 dessert spoons) cutting into 0.5 cm cubes and heating to 52 C over an hour.
I pressed the cheese for 12 hours the first time, the second time I tried 2 days but there was no difference in the texture. Am I using too much rennet perhaps ?
I used 69 lb (UK) in weights.
I will also look through the parmesan threads when I have time !
Thanks

[mtncheesemaker]

What is the name of the book?

[Sailor Con Queso]

There are several things that could go wrong, but let's start here.

When making Parm, the curd should be cut into rice sized pieces. This is best accomplished with a large whisk.

How big is your hoop? 100 liters is a good sized cheese and with a larger hoop 69 pounds probably is not enough weight for pressing. Parm is a thermophilic cheese and the pH starts to really drop about 4 or 5 hours into the make. That often causes the cheese to stick to the cheesecloth. (Several previous threads about this). The cheesecloth needs to be soaked or sprayed with a solution that is acidic (pH 4.5 or a little less) and has added calcium to prevent sticking. You also need to turn several times to get best results.

You should search the forum and read up on the flocculation method. That will help you understand the milk/rennet balance and how things are progressing during coagulation.

Peacheese - "Pea" "Cheese" - what a great name for an author of a cheese book.

[KosherBaker]

Looks like Sailor has figured out what your problems are.

I have been using 100 litres of milk, (it pains me to say, what a waste!)

It's still edible though, No?

I used 69 lb (UK) in weights.

The Parmesan recipe on this very site calls for 25 lbs of pressure for a single gallon of milk. A 100 liters is over 28 gallons of milk, and you are only applying 69 lbs of pressure to it. I don't know what the required pressure per pound is for Parmesan, so if you answer Sailors questions as to how big your wheel is and how much it weighs I'm sure you'll get your answer on how much weight to apply to it. Or better yet maybe someone will post the amount of pressure per pound of Parmesan.

[Boofer]

Thanks for your replies kosher baker, gina and deejay debi.
I am using a recipe from the cheesemaking book by paul peacheese,
I have been using 100 litres of milk, (it pains me to say, what a waste!)
 warming the milk to 40 degrees C, adding the rennet (3 dessert spoons) cutting into 0.5 cm cubes and heating to 52 C over an hour.
I pressed the cheese for 12 hours the first time, the second time I tried 2 days but there was no difference in the texture. Am I using too much rennet perhaps ?
I used 69 lb (UK) in weights.
I will also look through the parmesan threads when I have time !
Thanks

I didn't see any mention of the type of culture you are using. As Sailor mentioned, this is a thermophilic cheese. You should also be looking at lipase to give it the characteristic parmesan taste.

I looked for the book you mentioned, but was only able to find this one by Paul Peac.o.c.k:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=cheesemaking+paul+peacheese&x=0&y=0&ih=4_1_0_0_0_0_0_0_0_2.129_118&fsc=-1

I can't seem to get the forum editor to accept the name "Paul P.e.a.c.o.c.k". It changes it back to "Paul Peacheese". Perhaps the dialogue filter won't accept the "c.o.c.k"?  John??

Try to search on other parmesan recipes here, including http://cheeseforum.org/Recipes/Recipe_Parmesan.htm

Wow, 100 liters!    You might consider paring down the size of your efforts until you have some success. You can find recipes that deal with 12-16 liters of milk. This would be more easily handled and pressed with less pressure. You didn't say, but I would assume that this is raw milk, yes?

Finally, did you brine the cheese when it came out of the pressing?

Pictures? You can tell a lot from a good picture. 

-Boofer-

[Sailor Con Queso]

KosherBaker - your reply is mixing up pressing weight, pressure and pounds of milk. You do not increase pressing weight because of added pounds of milk, you increase it when you use a bigger hoop. There is a big difference between 25 pounds and 25 PSI (pounds per square inch). In order to help him out, we have to know the size (to get the square inches) of his hoop. IMHO this is a good example of how weight based recipes are irrelevant when moving to a bigger cheese. You can NOT go by recipes that call for a simple weight. The weight used on a 4" hoop is very different than the weight needed for a 10" hoop to get the same results.

I press Parms at about 5 or 6 PSI. Some people consider that pretty light. How much weight is that? Can't tell you without knowing the size of the hoop. The volume and weight of the cheese do not factor into the equation.

There are several good discussions on the forum regarding PSI.

[DeejayDebi]

I use an old recipe too - from an Italian translation that has worked well for me. I have some questions and a few comments that might help based on my experiences.

Thanks for your replies kosher baker, gina and deejay debi.
I am using a recipe from the cheesemaking book by paul peacheese (maybe the site editor is changing this name as well?) , I have been using 100 litres of milk, (it pains me to say, what a waste!)  warming the milk to 40 degrees C This is a bit low for cooking but not bad at the rennet stage, I add goat rennet at 36°C after everything else has been added. (3 dessert spoons) How big is a dessert spoon? cutting into 0.5 cm cubes as Sailor mentions this should be about the size of a grain of rice and heating to 52 C over an hour. I cook at 55°C until I get the right curd texture which appears to be at about a pH of 6.3 to 6.4.
I pressed the cheese for 12 hours the first time, the second time I tried 2 days but there was no difference in the texture. Am I using too much rennet perhaps ? pressing can be from 1 to 2 days depending on the time of year, humidity really affects the pressing time
I used 69 lb (UK) in weights. using my somewhat traditional pressing methods I generally use the rock to press (a board with two buckets of water or about 48 US pounds for a 7x5 inch wheel) I’m sorry I don’t know the difference between us pounds and UK pounds.

As I have no idea what a dessert spoon measures I suspect the biggest problem might be amount of rennet and the size of your curds, and  low pressing weight for that much curd. Could you define  the size of your molds? I hope this has helped

[KosherBaker]

There are several good discussions on the forum regarding PSI.

Thank you Sailor. I'm definitely planning on finishing, going through the archives. At the moment I'm in the middle of page 2, out of the 6 pages that seem to be available. Are there older archives somewhere? Or the 6 pages are it?

KosherBaker - your reply is mixing up pressing weight, pressure and pounds of milk. You do not increase pressing weight because of added pounds of milk, you increase it when you use a bigger hoop. There is a big difference between 25 pounds and 25 PSI (pounds per square inch). In order to help him out, we have to know the size (to get the square inches) of his hoop. IMHO this is a good example of how weight based recipes are irrelevant when moving to a bigger cheese. You can NOT go by recipes that call for a simple weight. The weight used on a 4" hoop is very different than the weight needed for a 10" hoop to get the same results.

I press Parms at about 5 or 6 PSI. Some people consider that pretty light. How much weight is that? Can't tell you without knowing the size of the hoop. The volume and weight of the cheese do not factor into the equation.

Your reply confused me a bit. If I have more curds to press (meaning greater volume) don't I have more "square inches"? Which would then have to figure into the PSI (pressure per square inch) formula? Since theoretically speaking a 4" mold can be made deep/tall enough to hold the same amount (volume) of curds as a 10" mold that is shorter.
I almost feel like we may be talking about two different things, but being a noob can't quite put my finger on what it is.

[DeejayDebi]

Rudy -

You are trying to find out how much pressure (in psi) it's takes to press a a flat cheese follower surface (square inches). So you need to calculate how many square inches your mold follower (or cheese surface) is first.

[KosherBaker]

Thanks Debi. I think I finally got it. I was thinking of cubic inches. Square inches would only be concerned with the surface space. Duh!!!

[DeejayDebi]

No problem Rudy hard not to think cube when your talking about a BLOCK of cheese!