My German/Swiss Tilsit #1

[JeffHamm]

that looks great too!  Nicely done again. 

- Jeff

[mtncheesemaker]

That looks great! Makes me want some.

[Tomer1]

Looks like either it was rindless without washing or perhaps they removed the rind before packaging? (which is weird since its an addition wight=money)

[iratherfly]

Bravo! Looks fantastic. The color on yous look very good. Seems like summer milk from grazing cows, lots of yellow typically related to Beta Carotene in the cow's diet.

Your cheese look more hearty and characterful than the Austrian one. I think theirs lack rind because it was aged in vacuum, as many commercial Tilsits do. It seems like a very commercial example. I would try a good Tilsit brand; pick it up in a cheese shop by its looks or suggestion of a good cheesemonger.  Glad you are controlling the flavor and texture better and better

What I found curious is that the commercial Austrian Tilsit had no rind. It was softer, moister, and more pliable than my Tilsit and it had a creamier mouthfeel. These are characteristics I would like to develop in mine. My Tilsit was fairly good for a first effort, but it missed the mark on those features.

That has a lot to do with the starter culture and flocculation rate. That buttery feeling you are describing seems like diacetylactis and
Leuconostoc mesenteroides. These are abundant in commercial starters such as Flora Danica and make this texture and flavor that kids get addicted too and tastes nice when melted, though very mild. I don't believe this is a traditional trait of Tilsit but you can change the starter to Flora Danica (or mix MA4000 series starter with MD89). The elasticity of the pâté can be extended even further by reducing the flocculation time.

[Boofer]

Thanks for your kind words and advice, Yoav.

The recipe I used was from 200 Easy Cheeses and right away after sampling the cheese I thought of what I could do to tweak the recipe. Your two suggestions, a culture with LLD and LMC combined with an increased floc factor, were right on the money. Matter of fact, I used Aroma B (LL, LLC, LLD, LMC) with a floc of 5x in my Esrom #3 this weekend. I expect it to be soft, elastic, and creamy. It also looks nice and golden without any added annatto. Very warm color.

-Boofer-

[iratherfly]

Hmmm floc of x5 may give you the opposite results. It could turn acidic. Good for Camembert but not for soft cheese that isn't surface ripened. What I meant is to take it from x4 to x3 or from x3 to x2.5. You can make up for it by aging longer I suppose. I don't know the recipe you are using so I am not sure.  (How long did you ripen it before renneting?)

[Boofer]

Hmmm floc of x5 may give you the opposite results. It could turn acidic. Good for Camembert but not for soft cheese that isn't surface ripened. What I meant is to take it from x4 to x3 or from x3 to x2.5. You can make up for it by aging longer I suppose. I don't know the recipe you are using so I am not sure.  (How long did you ripen it before renneting?)

Are we talking about the Tilsit or the Esrom? The Tilsit had a floc of 3x. The Esrom was 5x which I decided on because I renneted a little too quickly (pH-wise) at 6.50. It had ripened for about two hours at that point. I'm typing this at work and don't have my notes in front of me. It might be a little aggressive.

-Boofer-

[dttorun]

Are Tilsit and Tilsiter the same cheeses? Danlac has one recipe for Tilsiter if anyone is interested in.
Tan

[dttorun]

Never mind. Wikipedia says they are the same...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilsit_cheese

And here is the recipe from Danlac...

Process guidelines for Tilsiter (blocks/loafs of approx. 2.5 kg)

Raw material raw milk Standardization to 2.9 – 3.5 % fat depending on the protein content

Heating 72 – 75 C (161 – 167 F) for 16 – 30 sec. or 145 for 30 minutes

Cooling to renneting temperature: 30 – 32 C (86 – 90 F).

Inoculation Choozit Alp D LYO 100 DCU + PLA LYO 2 D Addition of CaCl2 approx. 20 gr. / 100 Lt.

Preripening to pH 6.50 Renneting 2 – 3 gr. pure calf rennet powder (Renco) or RenNet 1 gr/100 Ltr

Coagulation setting time: 15 – 18 min Coagulation time : 30 – 40 min.

Cutting curd grain diameter: green pea to hazelnut size (approx. 0.5 – 1 cm3)

Setting 5 – 10 min. Stirring 20 – 30 min.

Separating draw of whey, 30 – 40 % Stirring 10 –15 min.

Scalding (cooking) addition of water: 15 % +_ 3 % of hot water (temp. depending on amount of vat.

Scalding : to 38 C (100 F) , within 15 – 25 min.

Final stirring 40 – 50 min. (addition of 100 – 200 gr. of NaCl. / 100 Lt. cheese milk if dry salting is desired).

Filling into forms (hoops) Pressing depending on equipment, e.g. 15 min. 0.3 – 0.6 bar (1 bar atmospheric pressure)

Room temp. 25 C, frequently is not pressed but just turned, thus pH of the cheese must be 5.3 +-0.15 before brine bath and 5.505 +- 0.1 after brine bath)

Brining pH before brine bath : 5.2 +- 0.1 21 +- 21 ?Beume, 15 +- 3 C (59 F), pH 5,05 +- 0.1 (can be more acid than the cheese) concentrated
salt solution salting time : 24 – 54 h. depending on weight pH after brine bath : 5.10 – 5.15

Smearing dipping or spraying red smear solution (liquid culture in 5 volumes of 3 % NaCl solution), during initial ripening smearing must
be repeated twice.

Get spec sheet of PLA Ripening The first two weeks at 15 +- 3 C, 95 – 100 % RH (relative humidity)

Cheese must be treated with red smear twice a week until a nice closed but not too thick layer of redsmear has developed. (B. linens)

The next two – 6 weeks at 12 – 14 C, 85 – 90 % RH.

Packaging After washing and drying Storage at 6 C Mild type > 5 weeks Medium > 3 month Sharp > 6 month

Ingredient Suggestion:
Pure Calf Rennet Powder (100 gr.)
CHOOZIT™ Alp D LYO 100 DCU
PLA LYO 10 D - Aroma development culture for cheese

[iratherfly]

Thanks Tan! - Yes, they are the same cheese. Usually these name variations refer to a different form factor or if a cheese is a brand name or protected (AOC, DOP etc.) status, it's a way for the cheesemaker to make their own version and market it so it is identified by most people but is not illegaly using the name or representing the specific cheese. Other examples are Cantal Vs. Cantalet or Bûcheron Vs. Bûcherondin, etc.

Boofer - I have never made these, but they both seem to be in the x3-x4 range from what I see in Tan's recipe above and in 200 easy recipes. (actually Tan's recipe looks like x2-2.5).  The concept of the multiplier is of course to keep the process in sync with whatever your milk is doing today. Your recipe is the permanent thing here. The variable component is the milk behavior. Milk is seasonal and changes dramatically throughout the year. Fall milk is different than summer milk in pH, fat contents, solids, mineral makeup etc., so it will coagulate differently. You use the floc multiplier to keep the recipe stable and on target regardless of of what your milk does.  If your milk coagulates in 9 minutes today instead of 15 which it did last time, and your multiplier is x3, it is certainly okay to let it finish the job at 27 minutes (3x9) instead of your regular 45 (3x15).  Just confirm the texture of the curd with a simple clean break test.

If you try to extend it or change the multiplier because your milk is too fast/slow then you are losing that proportion in the process, which the floc multiplier system was designed to prevent.  That puts you back in the world of time-measured recipes (such as the ones in 200 Easy recipes) which are okay but not as reliable.  They are a lot like baking recipes that mention cups of flour instead of Grams or Ounces. If today's flour is lighter than usual and you put the same amount of water - you get an overly wet dough. that's why professional bakers rely religiously on weight and not volume.

So for example: say your milk today is 6.5pH instead of 6.6pH in rennet time. It has coagulated in 9 minutes instead of the regular 15 min which you expected.  Your target at cutting is 6.45pH. If you "listen" to the milk and do the x3 as your recipe called for, you will meet your recipe back at the prescribed 6.45pH point on the 27th minute and your recipe is back on target.  If you wait for x3 of the regular 15 minutes you are used to, than you will attend to the milk on the 45th minute (which happens to be the x5 multiplier of your actual 9 minutes today). Now your milk is 6.35pH instead of 6.45pH and with the cutting, cooking, scalding, moulding, pressing, de-moulding and salting all done at the wrong pH -you may get an acidic cheese or at least veer off your target recipe, which may still be okay and even delicious -but it may end up as a new type of cheese and not Tilsit or Esrom.

This past weekend I got some gorgeous raw milk from local grass fed Dutch Belted and Swiss Brown cows! I was excited but this is fall and milk is a bit different than what it was only 3-4 weeks ago.  The milk was 6.57pH! I put a little culture in it for the competition/pathogen control effect and was ready to rennet it in minutes. It hardened in 8 minutes (Usually in this recipe, at least 14). I was so shocked by the acidity of it that I cut the floc to x2.5 instead of 3. It was still a little above what it should be when I cut the curd, so I cooked it shorter and at the end of cooking it finally caught up to my original targets and from then on it was fine.  The next day I used the remaining gallon for an 18 hour semi-lactic recipe (60 day aged bloomy) and I was shocked that it was as hard as a rock by the time I got to it. (my bad, I should have checked on it and kill the recipe on the 12th hour instead of 18th).  The curd was 4.3pH instead of my desired 4.6-4.7 which is a HUGE difference and will give me totally different texture but interesting tangy/citrusy flavor which I like. Luckily I had an accident of tripling up on the yeast in this recipe (weird, never happened to me before) so it will be back on target about 72 hours through draining. Tilsit cheese would not have recovered from it. A bloomy 60 day recipe can...

[Boofer]

Yoav, I have a lot to learn. Thanks for the treatise on floc factoring. I'm still absorbing the ramifications you discussed. I'll copy & paste this into my general process notes.

I think your guidance was to my Esrom 5x floc factor, not this Tilsit which used a floc of 3x. The texture, salt level, and overall flavor for the Tilsit was a high five for me. The jury is still out (and will be for quite some time) on the Esrom.

I would consider the milk I used for the Tilsit and the Tomme #4 as summer milk. It was the end of July.

-Boofer-

[iratherfly]

Any time! Yes, end of July is summer milk.

For my guidance - you said that you wanted a softer more elastic cheese with more of those buttery notes so I suggested in a very general way that reducing floc multiplier and using starter culture with diacetyl would do that. It wasn't related so much to any one particular cheese. (However this floc advice doesn't work for surface ripened cheese; it's good for the "yellow" cheeses - Tomme, Cheddar, Manchego, Gruyere, etc.)

[Boofer]

Any time! Yes, end of July is summer milk.

For my guidance - you said that you wanted a softer more elastic cheese with more of those buttery notes so I suggested in a very general way that reducing floc multiplier and using starter culture with diacetyl would do that. It wasn't related so much to any one particular cheese. (However this floc advice doesn't work for surface ripened cheese; it's good for the "yellow" cheeses - Tomme, Cheddar, Manchego, Gruyere, etc.)

I gotcha now. Sorry for being obtuse. At any rate...good steerage, thanks.

-Boofer-