are there any other cheese making forums?

[dthelmers]

"You can't make good cheese from bad milk."

But you can make eatable cheese from drinkable milk. I've been using store bought P/H since I started making cheese last September, about 40-45 cheeses so far. A half dozen of those were with real milk, and they were memorable. P/H milk is harder to work with, and can convince you that you don't want to make cheese; but if you persist you can gain the experience that only comes with the repetition of the process. My current practice is to use 1 gallon of raw Jersey milk to 3 gallons of a local dairy's P/H milk; this is strictly because money is quite short at present. It's making a tolerable good cheese. Use real milk at least once at first, so that you can experience what real curd feels like. Then make a bunch of quick ripening cheeses, like Caerphilly or Lancashire from the store bought milk, and make a lot of Welsh Rarebit and macaroni and cheese.
Here's what I do for P/H milk:
Adding calcium chloride in about the same amount as your rennet will give you a stronger curd. Heating the milk just a couple of degrees hotter initially when you add the rennet will help. Some brands of milk are handled more gently than others, and give a better curd, so try all your local brands. When you cut the curd, do the cross cuts first and let it rest a couple of minutes until whey starts coming out, then do your horizontal cuts. Work very gently. When first stirring, use the narrow handle of your ladle, and just gently nudge the curd until it starts to firm up. As the curd starts to shrink, it will firm up, and you can start using your ladle to lift the curd from the bottom to the top; as it firms and shrinks more, you can actually stir it back and forth. The biggest problem that I've found with cheap milk is that hte fat has been damaged enough that it easily forms short chain fatty acids (think Parmesan) that give the cheese a lot of sharpness. I go for cheeses that have a long pre-ripening time, where the extra time ripening with mesophilic  bacterias help to give the milk some of the character that it was lacking.
Making quick ripening cheeses let me see where I was going astray with handling the curd too roughly and letting the acidity get away from me.
Also, chevre is real easy to make and really popular, so you can always make that when you don't want to make a pressed cheese. Wish I had access to goat's milk like that!
Dave in CT

[Saltysteele]

thanks, everyone, your advice is GREATLY appreciated

there is an amish fella that used to sell raw milk, but he quit a couple years ago.  he has a feed store, i might stop in and see if any of his buddies sells it

thank you all! 

[OudeKaas]

Salty, don't give up on store-bought milk! While there are plenty of bad experiences and indifferent to unusable products out there, many people on this forum make perfectly nice cheese using milk they bought at a local retail outlet.

I'm hardly the best expert here, but I'd say look for the product of a smaller or local producer if it's possible to identify one. Avoid ultra-pasteurized milk at all costs, even if it is 'organic' - it's just useless for cheesemaking. If you can find an organic milk that's not ultra-pasteurized, that's a step up, as is cow's milk that's not been homogenized. Call or email the maker if you are uncertain.

I'm in NYC and have made perfectly pleasant cheese from Tuscan Farm's pasteurized milk, and better from Sky Top farms unhomogenized product. And while an aged parm is a beautiful thing, you don't need to wait a year to get a nice cheese from store-bought milk. Try fresh cheese recipes such as fromage blanc or queso fresco, or hard cheese recipes like gouda or colby that need only a few months of aging. Based on my own (less that 12 months) experience, it really helps to have something coming up in the near future to taste to keep your motivation up . . .

Best of luck, keep us upated!

[Saltysteele]

Thanks for your encouragement! 

I'll keep trying different milk (my wife isn't going to like it )

this last batch gave me a good curd, although it didn't loose the whey like it should have.  might have to fiddle with the calcium chloride amount, i might have had too much.  also, until i get good milk, i'll just keep on with the citric acid to raise my acidity, instead of the yogurt method (at least, at first).

i'll also search around my basement for a cool spot, or be on the lookout for a wine chiller on craigslist.  we don't have caves around my area.

speaking of gouda - we have a store about an hour north of me (my in-laws live about 10 minutes from it, though) called "the cheese lady"

she has cheese from all over the world.  i recently purchased a gouda from her titled "potato chip gouda:" it is supposed to have potato in it.  it does have a potato chip flavor!   

my sister went to norway a few years ago and brought back some brunost.  while not a connoisseur's cheese, i imagine, we really like it.  the cheese lady has it, so i bought some from her, but i would really like to try making that.  seems to be a time-consuming endeavor, and doesn't always pan out (from what i read). 

so many different directions and types of cheeses to go/make!

[MrsKK]

While there aren't huge volumes of posts on this forum, the ones here are normally of very high quality!  But I think you've figured that out already.

This forum has been of very high value to me - I went from making cheddar that was very hit and miss to teaching cheesemaking classes about two years after I joined here.  While many hobbies have come and gone through my hands, cheesemaking is a passion.  Even when I don't have a lot going on, I check in here.  I'm excited by what others are doing and have learned so much.

This is the most amazing forum I've ever come across, with the nicest, most helpful knowledgeable people you could ask for - and not only when it comes to cheese!