dime000's Lactic Cheese - Question

[dime0000]

Hey all - so, I made my first cheese from "Home Cheese Making". It's that lactic cheese.

I guess I'm curious if I did this right. It has the taste of sour cream. It's just slightly more firm than a sour cream, but not by much. I've mixed in some salt and spices, but alas, it's still spiced sour cream to me...

It's good, don't get me wrong. I just want to make sure that this what it's supposed to be like.

[Tea]

Dime can you post the recipe that you used exactly as you did it.  It is a bit hard to trouble shoot, when we don't have anything to work with.

[dime0000]

good call - i was just wondering if lactic cheese is supposed to taste like sour cream... but, as i'm not home, let me see if i can recall from memory:

1G Whole Milk (Pasteurized)
1/4tsp calcium chloride
4 oz mesophilic (sp?) starter, made using that process of letting buttermilk sit out over night
1/4 tablet vegetable based rennet.

Heated up to 80F is a water bath
mixed in starter
mixed in calcium chloride and rennet in an up/down motion
sit it out at room temp for 12 hours
poured through a muslin bag, and hung another 10 hours or so.

that's really it! being the beer brewer that i am, i sanitized everything that would touch the cheese using Star-San.

[Cheese Head]

dime0000, that recipe looks very similar to this Neufchatel Chese Making Recipe . I have posted several Tricks and Traps with that recipe that I have learnt the hard way, could be of use.

Thus you should be getting low calorie cream cheese. If your consistency is that of sour cream then you are too moist. When I make Neufchatel (several records in the Cheese Making Board), I also hang in bag to gravity drain. Two things slow down the drainage of whey, 1) bag to fine, and 2) the drier cheese against the cloth forms a filter cake which does not allow the inner much moister curds to drain. Two solutions to 2) are periodically scrap the curds off the wall of the cloth with a spatula and the other is 1/2 way through hanging to remove the drained curd and turn it to put the top wet side down.

To get more flavor, basically you need to hang longer.

[dime0000]

ahhhh.. i was wondering if, perhaps, i rushed the process a bit.

Thanks. Fortunetly, I bought another gallon of milk (for some reason, I thought I needed 2 gallons). I'll probably mix up another batch of something this week and try your suggestions.

Thanks again!

[Tea]

Hi Dime, rather than taking down the bag and opening it up, I just knead the squeeze the bag while hanging to move the curd around and release any whey that might be there.

During the cooler months it does take longer for the flavours to develop, and in summer this can happen in a fairly short time. So just keep experiementing until you find what hanging time works for you.