Brine For Aging Cheese In - Brine pH Discussion

[george13]

I have prepared my 11% salinity brine for the storage and aging of my feta.  The pH of the brine is around 5.2, and the pH of the feta (before being submersed) was around 4.7.  In reading various posts/articles, there are discussions about keeping pH levels between cheese and brine very close, I am concerned that if I lower my brine to the 4's, it may be too acidic and alter the taste.  Also, after a sampling (1 week later) the chhese is somewhat more salty than I expected.  Should the brine salt be lessened and still remain within safe standards so as to inhibit unfavorable growth on my feta?
Thank you

[Cheese Head]

Hi george13

On pH, brine with pH of 4 seems very way too acidic why are you thinking about going that far? FYI when I started making brine for feta I didn't I just mixed salt and water and did not have a problem with slimy surface of cheese, now I use the whey from making the feta and just add salt to it and still no problem.

On brine % for preserving cheese in, I initialled made 16%, the normal minimum for unwanted microorganisms and found like many treads here that the cheese was way too salty. I bought some Feta and bags of whey and measured that brine at ~8.5% and the Feta tasted great. So my next batch I'm going to use that lower. The way I see it is I don't need to preserve Feta for years just a few months until I use it up.

[george13]

If my 11.5% is salty, I can imagine how much more salty a 16% brine would be.  I think I will also drop to an 8.5% solution.  Right now my brine pH is at 5.4 I think.  How does the use of whey as brine hold up with continued use? 
Thanks

[Cheese Head]

Don't know and probably not good/hygienic especially is using low % brine. Normally I end up throwing away whey as I have too much to store the Feta in, so I just make new whey based brine for storing the Feta in with each batch.

I assume they do same commercially and don't reuse as Feta is normally shipped in brine to retailers. Here's some pictures of wholesale Feta in buckets in Houston where I got those linked bags of whey from. The bottom posts and pictures are of it being sold in Vancouver in same plastic buckets and in a wooden barrel.

Salt is cheap and once you calculate the amount of salt per unit of water or whey it should be easy to mix up each time. Here's a Wiki: Making Brine article with a table for determining the amount of salt for a required % brine.