Camembert liquified on day 3, what went wrong?

[zovirl]

I tried making Camembert using the recipe in Mary Karlin's book. I thought it was going well, but when I went to turn the cheese on the 3rd day it had liquified and turned into a pile of goo. I'd appreciate help figuring out what went wrong. I'm guessing that since the texture changed so quickly from soft-but-solid to runny/liquid, something chemically must have been changing in the cheese. The PC hadn't started yet so it couldn't be the enzymes right? Can the acid from the meso starter cause this? Is it a contamination problem?

This is my 2nd failed attempt at Camembert (first time I took the forms off too soon and the wheel slumped). I've made both fresh cheeses and hard aged cheeses before, but haven't (yet) succeeded at making a bloomy rind cheese.

Ingredients
3 quarts pasteurized, non-homogenized whole cow's milk.
1/2 packet meso starter (C101 direct set, cheesemaking.com)
1/2 packet PC powder (zx27, madmillie.com)
1/4 teaspoon CaCl2
1/4 teaspoon liquid rennet
5 tablespoons salt, added to curds before filling hoops

Technique
Added meso and PC, ripened at 90F for 1.5 hours.
Added CaCl2 and rennet, maintained 90F for 1.25 hours
Cut into 1/2" pieces, let sit for 5 minutes
Removed some of the whey, added salt
Filled two 4.5" camembert molds.
Drained for 7.25 hours (flipped every hour at first, then started flipping every half hour to give the whey more chance to drip off the mats)
Put in the fridge (40F)

I flipped them the next morning and the next evening (day 1). The wheels had flattened a little but still looked decent. They felt fragile when I flipped them but were not runny. The whey coming off them was still clear.

The day after that I flipped them once (day 2). Wheels had flattened a little more but I could still pick them up to flip them.

On the third day it had turned to mush. The whey under the mat is white and cloudy. The cheese has dripped through the mat. The top has puddles of liquid cheese between the remains of the skin, and has a few bubbles in it.

I took lots of notes so I should be able to answer questions about anything I've left out (except for pH since I don't have a probe yet). You can see in the pictures what the cheese looked like when I took off the forms, and what it looked like on the 3rd day.

Thanks for any suggestions/help.

[Cloversmilker]

Can't answer your question, but am wondering.  What does it taste like?

[Oberhasli]

 Hmmm, quite a poser.   I know you mentioned you had a problem before with removing the forms too soon.  When you are flipping your cheeses, when did you remove your form this time?  The cheeses in the picture look good, was that right before you put it in the fridge?  You also mentioned "bubbles" on top of the cheese.  Did you cut into the lumpy one ( )  and see if it was spongy inside?  It might be contamination.  When your recipe calls for 1/2 a packet, about how much is that in teaspoon or tablespoon terms?  The camembert recipe I use has the meso, pc and rennet all going in at the same time and ripening for 1 - 1 1/2 hrs.  I don't have a pH meter either, but maybe it was too long a set? 

Bonnie

[Caseus]

I can't help, but I'm really interested in the diagnosis, as I'm planning to make Camembert in the near future. 

Your cheeses looked so lovely before the tragic dissolution.

[tinysar]

It probably has nothing to do with the cheese dissolving, but can I ask why you used calcium chloride here? Was the milk old or something?

[Boofer]

Some observations:

• Get rid of the bamboo mats. They harbor infection and are difficult to properly sanitize. Use plastic mats.
• Search for "flocculation" on the forum and use that technique for determining how long after the rennet is added before cutting or ladling the curd.
• 5 tablespoons salt added to that volume of curd (3 quarts of milk) is excessive. Does the recipe call for it to be added to the curds before hooping? Most of the time, the recipes call for a teaspoon or so sprinkled on each flat side.
• Bonnie makes a good point: how much is in a half packet? Perhaps you are overdosing the milk which could lead to greater bio-activity, greater acidity, and maybe greater proteolysis & lipolysis.
• Moving the cheese into the fridge @ 40 °F might be advisable after the cheese had ripened at 46-52 °F, but it would most likely inhibit normal cheese processes.
• Recommend you get some small round needlepoint mats from Michaels. One placed on each end of the Cam mold (and, later, the cheese itself) would allow you to flip the cheese without actually touching it and possibly poking a finger into it.

Oh yeah, welcome to the forum, zovirl. 

-Boofer-

[zovirl]

Thanks for helping!

Taste: I'm not sure how to describe it. It has a sour taste, vaguely like sour cream but less pleasant and with more cheese overtones.

Removing forms: this time I removed my forms 7.25 hours after filling them. The first picture was taken right after the forms came off. Right after that they went into the fridge.

Inside: I cut in and it looked like a soft cheese inside. Honestly it reminds me of the texture of runny camembert, only about 7 weeks too early It wasn't spongy like a well-risen bread dough would be, for example.

Amounts: meso starter: each packet is supposed to set 2 gallons of milk. I think a half packet is maybe 1/8 teaspoon. PC powder was the same: 1 packet for 2 gallons of milk, and I would also guess a half packet is about 1/8 teaspoon?

Calcium chloride: The milk was good quality milk as far as I know. It was pasteurized though, and the recipe called for CaCl2 so I added it.

Salt: salt is stirred into the curds and whey before filling the hoops, so I think lots of it is lost during draining.

So if the cheese was over-ripened, that would mean too much acid but also too many of the enzymes responsible for proteolysis? And so they could keep working after the cheese went in the fridge and keep weakening the cheese?

[DeejayDebi]

WOW! That's really kewl! Sorry ... never saw that before.

Almost looks like to much moisture trapped in the curds . Did you overheat by any chance? Any heat spikes during the make?

[tinysar]

Boofer makes a good point about the salt. According to the wiki article: cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki-cheese-calcium-chloride/, over-salting at an early stage can leach out the calcium, which in turn can lead to poor curd coagulation. 3 days seems like a really short time to have cheeses dissolving from any kind of contamination or culturing mistakes.

I haven't seen this recipe that you're using, but all Cam recipes I've seen salt after the cheeses are removed from their molds, using about 1 tsp salt per gallon of milk. And even for a curd-salting recipe where a lot is lost in the whey, 5 tbslp/3 qts seems like a lot. For a comparison, my basic blue recipe, which is quite a salty cheese (even before the 1 tsp/gal surface-salting step), has a curd-salting step which uses about 1 tblsp/3 qts.

[george]

Half a packet of C101 is about 1/4 tsp - I measured them once, a full packet is 1/2 tsp, which actually will work for 3-4 gallons (in my experience).

[zovirl]

Almost looks like to much moisture trapped in the curds . Did you overheat by any chance? Any heat spikes during the make?

According to my notes, 91 F is the hottest it got. However, this brings up a question I wanted to ask: How wet is Camembert supposed to be when the hoops come off?

I've made Cheddar and Gruyere before, and after those wheels come out of the press and sit out for a couple hours they are dry to the touch. The Camembert wheels were still dripping wet the next day after coming out of the hoops (when I picked them up for their first turn after going into the fridge the mat literally had whey dripping off of it and the tupperware had a layer of why at the botom). Is that normal for Cam?

I'm thinking I should have filled a single mold to the top instead of half-filling two molds. This would have exerted more pressure and expelled more moisture right?

[Caseus]

My opinion carries no weight, since I've never made Camembert, and in fact, I'm a newbie who has only made two cheeses so far.  But I think a big problem was the amount of salt you used.  You might go back and read Boofer's post for more experienced insight. 

I'm not sure if these will help, but here are a couple of videos that I found quite fascinating about the production of Camembert.  In both, molds are filled to the top.

Here is the first video:

Camembert Cheese, France

Here is the second one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/apr/17/camembert

[tinysar]

I'm thinking I should have filled a single mold to the top instead of half-filling two molds. This would have exerted more pressure and expelled more moisture right?

Nah, not really - because a single cheese would've had a smaller surface-area-to-volume ratio, so even though there's more weight pressing down, there's also less exposed surface to lose moisture from. Your first pics show your cheeses to be a good size. Also if you make Cams too thick, apparently they don't ripen properly all the way through. I think the wetness is normal.

[zovirl]

I'm not sure if these will help, but here are a couple of videos that I found quite fascinating about the production of Camembert.  In both, molds are filled to the top.

Very helpful, thanks. I'm surprised they can pick the wheels up like that at the end. Mine were too fragile to pick up like that, they were like very soft jello and I had to handle them very carefully. I'm suspecting I need to get more moisture out.

[george]

And use less culture - 1/4 tsp is too much for three quarts of milk.  So maybe do that, and then stir a little more, might do the trick for ye.