Cow's Milk, Organic Store Bought - Using In Cheese Making

[marblemason1]

  One thing I'm noticing right off the bat is how expensive organic whole milk is in comparison to regular Homogenized milk.  Is there any noticeable difference in the final product if Calcium Chloride is added to regular store bought milk to help set the curds?  It's the difference in paying over 5 dollars for a gallon of milk as opposed to paying around a buck-eighty as Sams Club that has me concerned.

[linuxboy]

Organic whole milk is most often ultrapasteurized. It is no good for normal cheesemaking and will only make lactic curd. So unless you must have organic, it's no good for many cheeses.

Raw milk, on the other hand is worth it, IMHO.

I've made cheese with cheap store milk for years, nothing wrong with that. Your flavor options are determined largely by culture when using store milk.

[Mondequay]

I think it's ALL about the milk. I tried about 5 store bought milks before I found one that makes cheese - that was a lot of waste but great experience! Yield from raw milk will be higher so that off-sets the cost some or you could mix the two. I pay $6.50/gal for raw milk and that is much less than a pound of good cheese.
Christine

[marblemason1]

 Short of knowing someone with a lactating cow, where would one find raw milk?  I'm still curious as to weather or not the Calcium Chloride is a viable option for curd formation with store bought whole milk.  I can score a 6oz. bottle of calcium chloride for a couple of dollars.  I'm sure as time goes by I'll go the raw milk route.  But for right now I'm working on doing my first farmhouse cheddar and some mozzarella.

 Will the calcium chloride assist me in curd formation, and if so by how much?  From what I've read it's supposed too, but any first hand knowledge of it's use by the members here would be greatly appreciated.  I'm a total newbie to this and don't know squat! LOL.

[ConnieG]

As to your question where can you get raw milk, here is a list of places in CO licensed to sell raw milk: http://www.realmilk.com/where1.html#co

I have a cow and so don't use the calcium chloride - someone else will have to answer that one.

[Boofer]

Short of knowing someone with a lactating cow, where would one find raw milk?  I'm still curious as to weather or not the Calcium Chloride is a viable option for curd formation with store bought whole milk.  I can score a 6oz. bottle of calcium chloride for a couple of dollars.  I'm sure as time goes by I'll go the raw milk route.  But for right now I'm working on doing my first farmhouse cheddar and some mozzarella.

 Will the calcium chloride assist me in curd formation, and if so by how much?  From what I've read it's supposed too, but any first hand knowledge of it's use by the members here would be greatly appreciated.  I'm a total newbie to this and don't know squat! LOL.

You can use the search tool on this forum for additional answers to your questions but for now here's an answer from an earlier post: http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3129.msg25555.html#msg25555

-Boofer-

[marblemason1]

Thanks for that, Boofer.

 I'll be sure to try the search engine first.

[goodgoat]

We have a goat farm in Borneo and pasteurize all of our milk 70C for 30min and have been recommended to use calcium chloride by the person who sold us our cultures. Calcium Chloride does seem to make the curd firmer and at least for Feta our cheese comes out fantastic. Other cheeses also are fine, Chevre for instance no difference in taste but CaCl2 makes firmer curd so faster draining (less chance of getting things growing on it in warm humid environment).

I have also tried to make Mozzarella and failed only to learn that calcium chorlide will buffer and inhibit acidification of the cheese somewhat, and you need the acid to strech Mozzarella so the advice I got is don't use calcium choride for Moz. I will try Moz. again without the calcium and raw milk but heard you should use buffalo for Moz. Maybe we can tame and milk local buffalo otherwise will use goat milk.