Author Topic: Age a Direct Acid Set Cheese?  (Read 4877 times)

Curtis2010

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Age a Direct Acid Set Cheese?
« on: October 08, 2015, 02:26:07 AM »

Ive never heard of  direct acid set cheese being aged, can it be done successfully?  Or, are the cultures used in more commonly aged cheeses necessary to the aging process?


Sailor Con Queso

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Re: Age a Direct Acid Set Cheese?
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2015, 01:36:07 PM »
Lactic bacteria eat lactose and convert it to lactic acid, lactate, and other compounds. When the lactose is gone, the bacteria have no more food and they die. When they die, their cell wall breaks and releases enzymes into the cheese. It is primarily those enzymes that "age" the cheese. So an acid set cheese is going to be missing most of the "ingredients" necessary for aging.

gravity84

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Re: Age a Direct Acid Set Cheese?
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2015, 05:34:38 PM »
Would it be possible to inoculate with a mesophilic culture like buttermilk, let it sit at temp for a bit, then coagulate with vinegar with the intent of aging?

Offline mikekchar

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Re: Age a Direct Acid Set Cheese?
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2018, 12:23:08 PM »
I know this thread is over 3 years old, but since it's my first post, I hope you'll forgive me.  I've been experimenting with ripening milk with a thermophilic culture (actually yogurt) for 50 min, adding citric acid and then putting directly into a camembert hoops (really a Pepsi bottle with the top and bottom cut out and holes poked into the sides).  Flip every hour for 4 hours and then brine as normal (similar to a Bel Paese).  Aged in the fridge.  I've got several small ones on the go (I made cheese every day for a week -- 500ml to 1 litre each) and I've been tasting them at 1 week intervals.

Long story short: yes, you can do it.  There are some caveats and I'm still experimenting to try and find the optimum temperature rests etc.  I also tried with a buttermilk culture and it was very good, but it's a bit more challenging.  The key is that if you don't  denature the protein, it will form curds at a higher pH than you expect (assuming unhomgenised milk -- homogenised milk requires a lower pH, presumably because the fat is interfering).  The curds will actually melt.  Now the problem is that acid formed curds don't hold onto fat particularly well (being very delicate), but I've fount that about 42C there is a sweet spot where the curds will melt and not lose too much fat.  You can then move it into a mould and it will form a hard cheese without pressing.  Very surprisingly the resultant cheese will *also* melt and is actually delicious.  Mesophilic culture is challenging because you don't quite get hot enough to melt the curds.  When you put it into the mould, it doesn't knit properly.  I've tried a number of things -- pasta filata (loses pretty much all the fat), washed curd (needs to be pressed, but some possibilities there), cheddaring (makes a very delicious Caerphilly like cheese, but is extremely sensitive to temperature -- too high, or for too long and you ruin it).

I need to do some more experiments and also taste the cheeses I've made so far (the last one I tasted was 3 weeks old  -- aged in the fridge, and it needed considerably more time).  I'll post a proper thread when I have more info.  I've seen a couple of these kinds of threads and while I can understand the idea that there is no real point (rennet is not that hard to get), I'm surprised nobody seems to have actually tried it.