Hmmmm ... okay, so there will be no young cheeses eaten in this house for a while. Thanks for that, Sailor and Boofer. Age age age, Mary.
As far as the over-acidification, that may not be a problem in this case, but it's very helpful to know for future. From what I understand, the culture I have from NE Cheesemaking is pretty wussy - contains only s.lactis, s. cremoris and malto dextrin. Eventually I'll get something a little more ... errrr ... rounded from somewhere else, but since I still have probably 40 packs or so of it, it's going to last me a while as it is.
LB thanks for that rennet article, too. Turns out this rennet is also from mucor. I remember when I was first buying stuff I bought this one by default, because I didn't like the sodium benzoate in the dry calf rennet, and the liquid calf rennet ingredients were even worse (from my perspective, anyway). Is there anywhere I can get calf rennet that DOESN'T use sodium benzoate or propylene glycol or any of that other really oocky stuff as a preservative? Or am I just being too anal about it? (Sorry, I've been hanging out with WAPF people too long, perhaps.)
As far as the floc point issue, something only just occurred to me as I was making my first Havarti yesterday - am I supposed to be timing from the time the rennet first hits the milk, or after I've finished stirring? 'Cause I always do the up-and-down stir for a minute, then top stir for another minute (always raw milk), so for the all of two previous times I've made cheese using floc method, I wasn't counting those couple of minutes in the total floc time. In yesterday's recipe, though, I went down to 1/4 of the amount of rennet called for, and managed a floc time of 12 minutes on the Havarti - including stir time. I'm starting to think the stir time should be included ...
And to think I used to think rennet was rennet. Yeesh on me.