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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => RENNET COAGULATED - Hard Cooked (Swiss) => Topic started by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 01:09:11 AM

Title: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 01:09:11 AM
  I've spent the last year attempting to make Alpine style cheeses with quite good success thanks to so many of you from this board.  I've been pretty quiet here as I have never really needed to ask for advice, as every question was answered simply by searching through the posts. So after gleaning so much information from you all I thought I would post a run down of today's make and give thanks to the folks here that made it possible.
  This Beaufort attempt is based largely on Sailor Con Queso's Beaufort post of March 3rd 2013 but was tweaked by input from greats such as Linuxboy, Alpkaserei, Arnaud, Jeff Hamm, Boofer, H-K-J, Gorkan, Al Lewis, DeejayDebbi, as well as Margret Morris and Wilma Klein Swormink of Glengarry Fine Cheese and for sure many more.  Thanks guys!
 
  So I started with 16 liters of Liberte organic 3.8% Pasteurized unhomogenized cow's milk
 
  Starter cultures:  (Still working on getting a scale that can go to thousandths so for now I'm still using spoons)
 
  1-16th tsp Meso III (same as MA011)
  1-16th tsp Aroma B (same as Flora Danica)
  1-16th tsp LH100 (Lacto Helveticus and Lactobacillus  delbrueckii blend)
  1-16th tsp TA 061 (Strep Therm)
  1-32 tsp Propionic shermanii (Friendly Sherman)

5 am: Milk out of the fridge to slowly warm up.

7am:  Milk into double boiler with water bath at 101 F

8:28 am: Milk at 90F pH 6.61

8:30 am: Cultures in, waited 5 minutes, top stirred for 20 strokes.  Breakfast time!

9:16 pH down to 6.51,  three quarter tsp Ca Cl , 20 strokes,  one half tsp single strength calf rennet,  20 strokes.    Still the milk and start the flocc clock!  Dip cake knife in milk for flocc every 30 seconds.

9: 30  First sign of flocc 14 X 3= 22 minutes to cut.  (A little short so will lower rennet next time)

9:57 Good clean break achieved on second try.  (Curds a bit soft so preparing kidd gloves for stirring) Cut into 1 inch cubes, waited 4 mins to heal. cut into peanut sized curds, waited around 10 minutes to heal.

10:18  Gently stirring without heating.

10:31  Stirring with heat!  First ten minutes got me  to 94 then ramped up the heat as the curds became firmer.

11:03  pH 6.46 and 116F; still stirring and heating. Strong rice sized curds.

11:15 Hit 127 F coinciding with 6.3 pH woo hoo!!  Get these babies to shore!

11:16 Whey off, and into the hoop.
 
  I use one of Glengarry's hardwood cheese presses so I don't have psi points to note here.  Some day I will buy Carter's wonderful pneumatic one when I get the cash.

11:18 Pressed lightly under whey for 15mins

11:33 Flipped pressing a bit more for 30 mins (still under whey)

12:05 Took press out of the whey.  Flipped and pressed harder for 1 and a half hours to close the rind.

1:40  Flipped and pressed again for the rest of the day. Which is where I am now.

At fourth pressing she's clocking in at 1.86 Kg or 4.1 lbs.

Will likely wake up real early to take a core pH. before it gets below 5.3.  I know a Beaufort is meant to be a blind cheese but after a week of washing with B Linens and my Bohemian Pilsner I may try to get some eyes for the hell of it.  It's never worked for me before but with the right salt and pH who knows?

Thanks to all of you for your guidance and remarkable courtesy here.  Hats off to you!

Nathan

Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 04:21:25 AM
Nice Beaufort, Nathan!

I didn't know Liberté had cream line milk. I once sent them an email about their goat milk and they said ALL their products were homogenized. They probably meant all their goat products.

Nice pics too! I like the double boiler with the valve.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 01:08:27 PM
Thanks Eric,
  If they said ALL then you may well be right about the homogenization.  The carton did not say homogenized so I assumed it wasn't.  I always shake up the carton so I couldn't see a cream line.  Lovely milk though.  Performed well nonetheless.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 01:57:51 PM
  The big pot with a valve on it is my old Polarware mash tun from my small batch-homebrewing days.  It's probably much too big for my cheese make size.  I really need to blast the heat to get my milk raised up in a timely manner.  I'm in the drawing board stages of creating a food warmer system with PID.  Ever use those Spoons?  Looking to learn from the board's experience.  PIDs seem really complicated to understand. 

 Back on topic for a Beaufort Update:
  Sent her into saturated brine this morning at 7 am.  She's clocking in at 1.835 Kg.  So far so good.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 03:32:22 PM
I'm in the drawing board stages of creating a food warmer system with PID.  Ever use those Spoons?  Looking to learn from the board's experience.  PIDs seem really complicated to understand. 


I avoided the whole DIY PID thing. I wanted absolute temp control and came up with a nice sous-vide solution. I have an 8L and 16L version. They are posted here:

http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,12461.0.html (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,12461.0.html)

This setup works with absolute precision. No overshoots. I don't even need a thermometer, but I still feel uncomfortable not using one, so I use one.

 
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 03:42:56 PM
Thanks for the reply Spoons.  Your setup looks quite simple and reliable.  I would love to avoid complicated programming with PIDs as well. It may in the end be unnecessarily complicated.  How is the power output with sous-vides?  Is the temperature ramping fast enough especially with part of your bath exposed to the air?  I am assuming the sous vide circulates your bath water nicely for even temperature distribution.  Is there a reason you went for a plastic water bath pan intead of a stainless steel hotel pan?
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 04:24:23 PM
Never mind my last post Spoons.  You explained everything quite well in your post.  I'll read ahead next time.
 
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 04:37:19 PM
I spent sleepless nights over-thinking this setup. lol. Totally worth it though since there's a reason each piece is the way it is. So here's a few answers to your questions:

Water bath: It needs to be plastic because you want to loose as little heat as possible to the exterior. Plastic is a poor heat conductor so it does a great job at this.

Stainless Steel pan: The thinner the gauge, the better. You want the best heat transference rate as possible. So I only use cheap 24 gauge stainless pans.

Anova circulator: it has a 1KW heater and circulates 12L water per minute.

Exposed water from water bath (evaporation and heat loss): I cut a cambro lid on my 8L setup and it does a great job. I still haven't thought of a "cover" for my 16L setup, but I've had no problems so far.

Example of how it works (16L version):

Water Bath: 18L. I always put the same amount, so I don't get fluctuations between each cheese I make.
Temp differential (milk; before coagulation) : 2F. So if I want the milk to heat to 88F, I set the circulator to 90F.
Temp differential (After flocculation point) : 3F. The milk will curdle and become solid, in order to stay at 88F, I raise the circulator to 91F
Temp differential (stirring curds): 3F. Same as previous.
Temp differential (cooking, typical 88F to 102F in 40-45 mins): Step 1; raise circulator to 100F for exactly 30 minutes. This will raise the curd/whey temp to exactly 95F in the first 30 minutes. Step 2; Raise circlator to 115F for 12 minutes, this will raise the curds/whey to 102 in 12 minutes. Step 3; set circulator to 104 to maintain 102F and add 2L of cold tap water from the fridge to the bath to bring down bath temp from 115F to about 98F.

It's a very methodical approach. Extremely consistent. I don't have notes for thermo cheeses yet.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 04:39:08 PM
Never mind my last post Spoons.  You explained everything quite well in your post.  I'll read ahead next time.
 

Lol, too late. At least it gave me an excuse to document the temp differentials on the 16L setup.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 04:48:20 PM
Fantastic explanations Spoons.  Just what I needed to know.  I'm curious to find out it's performance with thermo cheeses as that is my main main focus of late.  Going from 90F to 127F in 50 minutes would take a fair amount of power output.  I am assuming that bumping up temperatures in steps like you explained was to avoid heating too fast? 
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 05:00:36 PM
I am assuming that bumping up temperatures in steps like you explained was to avoid heating too fast?

At first I was raising the circulator by 2-3F every few minutes. Sometimes I'd loose track of time and would be behind schedule. So I came up with the 3-step heating schedule and it's extremely accurate.

For a thermo cheese, I would probably start it off from 92F to 120F in one step, then maybe 120F to 140F to bring it to 127F, then cool down the bath with cold water. It will work. You just need to find the right temps and right amount of time.
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Bear and Bunny cheese on April 19, 2014, 05:20:21 PM
Is the point of adding cool water at the end of your ramp to prevent an overshoot?
Title: Re: Beaufort creation with my appreciation
Post by: Spoons on April 19, 2014, 05:54:12 PM
Yep. The bath then immediately corrects itself to the right temp. I also do a lot of washed curd cheeses, so I don't go through that step for that type.