Hi,
I tend to make ice cubes of culture. Basically, put 1/8 or less of a teasponn of culture in skim Long life milk (Ultra pasturized stuff), and then leave it out for 24 hours at room temp for meso, and in the hot water cupboard for thermo. It goes thick, like yogurt. Freeze that into ice cubes. For 10 L of milk, one or two ice cubes seems to work fine. I've made a few cheeses with 4 ice cubes, because a lot of the recipies for 10 L say to use 4 oz of starter, and each cube is about 1 oz. I'll need to double check my notes on which ones used the 4 cubes, but generally the 1 or 2 cubes seems to work fine as far as I can tell.
I don't create a new batch from the last ice cube but start "fresh", which I have to do now as I think I only have one or two cubes left now. I like this better than trying to measure out fine quantities of the culture. The mother culture should be more consistent in strength, at least on a "per batch" basis.
- Jeff
P.S. And, I just checked my make notes for the caerphilly that had the bitter taste to it (my 3rd one). I had aged that out past 100 days, and it was one of the cheeses where I used 4 ice cubes of starter. I've cut back to 1 or 2 cubes since then, so I'll be interested to see how things compare.
