Buttermilk - Using In Making Cheese

[bobb]

I have a source of fresh buttermilk from a butter making company.  By itself, or adding back cream, will it make an acceptable aged cheese, following cheddar, colby, swiss, or other hard cheese recipes?  Suggestions for other uses of this milk item??

[MrsKK]

Buttermilk has had all of the fat - butter - removed from it, so you wouldn't want to use it for any of the recipes you've listed.

You could try it for making parmesan or other dry types of cheese, but I'm not sure how it would turn out.  You may invent something new!

[bobb]

I'm thinking of adding Heavy Cream or Whipping Cream to reconstitute to 4% butterfat, then pasteurize and cool to get it back something close to the original milk.  The composition of the fresh buttermilk is .5% Butterfat and 8.0% Total Solids.  The addition of some cream(using pearson square) should bring the blend to 4.0% BF and 11-12 TS, which is similar to Whole Milk.  I think I'm looking for a unique flavor from the buttermilk solids, which will cost nothing.

[Cheese Head]

Hi bobb, sounds good, I see from your profile that you are in US assuming that "pearson square" is a brand of cream, then it is probably already Ultra Pasteurized, so you don;t really need to pasteurize again, unless you want to reduce the bacteria count in the buttermilk. Many people actually use store bought buttermilk as a mesophilic (low temp) starter culture as it contains healthy amounts of live culture. So with addition of cream you should be ready to make some cheese!

[bobb]

"Pearson Square" is a math proceedure to calculate the ratio of two dairy products to obtain the desired fat in the blend.  Google it to get the proceedure.

Cultured buttermilk is a different product (basically, flavor bacteria in skimmilk).  My buttermilk is from a butter plant, where the cream was pasturized before butter manufacturing. The resulting buttermilk is held, usually pasteurized, then transported by tanker.  Lots of pumping and handling. Just trying to be safe.

[MrsKK]

In that case, I would pasturize it, too.

Good luck and let us know what kind of results you get.