Cartier (and Tea for when it applies).....
Today my middle daughter and I made a Colby/Jack cheese. We used a six gallon recipe with her doing a 3 gallon Jack and me doing a 3 gallon Colby.
I used the recipe for both styles of cheese from Leeners.com and one thing that was very different was the addition of whipping cream to the whole milk.
According to their site, the cream will make the milk more like raw milk and I have to say I was very impressed with the result.
The Monterey Jack got a quart of whipping cream and the Colby got a pint. What impressed me was the curd I got by using this additon.
After making my vertical cuts, I actually turned out those really long, firm looking columns of curd in both cheeses (pretty close to what Tea had in her Colby pics). There was absolutely no mushing of the curd, although they weren't as firm as I would like to have seen while in the stirring stage of the recipe.
I don't know if this was a fluke, or if this might be the answer we have been looking for. Mind you, this was on only a 35 minute set, after adding the rennet.
Another thing that amazed me was that I used both milk from Chester Dairy and Prairie Farms brand since I couldn't get enough of the Chester Dairy brand for this batch. As I said in another post, the Prairie Farms brand is usually a very inferior curd. This time, both curds looked exactly the same so that also makes me think the whipping cream addition was the key.
Btw....the whipping cream I bought, was ultra pasteurized but it didn't seem to hurt anything. You might give it a try and see how it works out for you.
Dave