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GENERAL CHEESE MAKING BOARDS (Specific Cheese Making in Boards above) => Problems - Questions - Problems - Questions? => Topic started by: Tiarella on May 10, 2014, 12:06:24 AM
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Some dear friends of mine, fellow goat owners and all around lovely people of course, have a great mystery just begging for help from all you folks. Last year they made copious amounts of lovely chevre. This year they can't get a decent curd....it all ends up looking like yogurt or runnier. They have tested their rennet and it passes the test. They have changed their milking machine washing regime and even just tried making chevre from hand-milked milk. They have tried pasteurized and raw. In fact, I'll let Joe speak for himself so you have all the clues of this mystery. We've talked this over and been totally stumped.....especially since when they gave me a gallon of milk I made a nice little batch of Brie with it and it formed curd just fine! Their cultures have come from different batches, different shipments...well, I'll let them explain.
Joe writes:
"We have yet to be able to make a successful batch of chevre this year. I cant imagine how such a simple cheese can fail. On multiple tries, all we get is a loose, milky -whey curd. This is being made with one gallon of goats milk. We have tried it both pasteurizing at 145 degrees for 30 mns to going only to 85 when we add the culture. We have tried three different chevre/M101 cultures all with the same results. We have switched pots, as we were using and aluminum pot; again no change. We have used animal and vegetable rennet with same results. We tested out rennet as outlined on the webpage and it tested fine. We have tried to add culture and then wait 6-10 hours before adding rennet. It looks like the culture is working as the milk smells more acidic with coagulation/curd formation. I haven't pH tested the milk after culture, but the fresh milk is a pH of 6.6.
we have varied out renent amounts from
1. 1 drop into 1/3 cup chlorine free cold water and then 1 tsp of that,
2. 3 drops into 1/4 cup of water and then add the whole amount to the milk
3. 2 drops of rennent directly into the milk
again. all fails
It seems the curd forms but just never forms a firm, cutable curd. It looks like yougurt. I have attached a photo
I was wondering if I should go to the extreme and add 1/4 tsp of rennent and see if that works.. I could then just keep backing off the amount
Any suggestions? Thanks again for your time and consideration
Joe and Stan McCoy
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... and all around lovely people of course, ...
There's the problem! :P
Did they test the rennet on 1 gallon of store-bought milk? This would rule out either the rennet or their own milk by doing the test.
If it's the milk, then I would take a wild guess and say it's casein deficiency in the milk. Their goats are probably grazing on something not beneficial to milk production.
or
a contaminant in the milk (vat or equipment clean but not sanitized, or a contaminant IN the milk)
or
Improper rennet handling (over-stirred? improper storage like exposure to sunlight, etc...)
or
rennet quality: should be around 90% chymosin and 10% pepsin.
I hope Mr. White chimes in (Pav), he'll certainly have an answer.
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Hmmm, over-stirred rennet??? this is a new thought. I'm going to send Joe and Stan a link to this thread so they can read along and answer questions. Thanks for your ideas!!! The goats are fed grain and hay with some pasture to nibble.....not huge amounts of pasture. I think Pav is on sabbatical while he busts his ass getting his creamery up.....or something very exciting like that and I can't wait to hear about it when he resurfaces.
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I had my crack at an answer on the other thread:
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=12728.msg98813#msg98813 (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=12728.msg98813#msg98813)
Basically the quality of goat's milk varies depending on when it comes in the lactation cycle. I'm not sure what can be done about this (aside from a new kid, of course); the most likely solution seems to be feed.
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we have varied out renent amounts from
1. 1 drop into 1/3 cup chlorine free cold water and then 1 tsp of that,
2. 3 drops into 1/4 cup of water and then add the whole amount to the milk
3. 2 drops of rennent directly into the milk
I have always used 3 drops into 1/4 cup water then 1 TBSp into 1 gallon goat milk.
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My Chevre never gets a firm curd.
Have you tried scooping it into molds and draining it the way it is? Or does it run through the holes?
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Tim, thanks for chiming in with ideas!
I'm hoping Joe or Stan will answer directly but from our phone conversations I know the following:
The amount of rennet they're using is what they used last year with all successes.
The milk is early lactation milk but not so early that it could be an issue. They are a more than a month into lactation.
The milk formed a Brie curd fine for me....same milk, different person/kitchen/recipe (yes, they are going to use my recipe to test now)
Steff, it's too runny for molds......and even when they tried to drain with butter muslin the resulting whey was very milky and the texture was off on the resulting chevre. We talked about this yesterday and I don't remember quite how Joe described the texture but remember it was unsatisfactory. Their rennet version #2 would have been more rennet than you say you use and it was still a fail. Do you think they can just use a much larger amount of rennet and then if curd forms they can slowly try less and less rennet in future batches?
Joe wrote this morning to say he forgot to mention that they've tried adding a 1/2 tsp. of calcium chloride with no success.
Diet is grass, hay, grain....same as last year when they had success although I think Joe should post here exactly what they are feeding just in case there's something that triggers an idea of a reason for all these fails.
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As I am milking this am I was thinking about this.
If you made a successful Brie with that milk, rule out the milk.
Did you use the same rennet and cultures? If not one of those would be suspect. Could they be old? How are they stored?
New rennet and new cultures might solve the problem.
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As I am milking this am I was thinking about this.
If you made a successful Brie with that milk, rule out the milk.
Did you use the same rennet and cultures? If not one of those would be suspect. Could they be old? How are they stored?
New rennet and new cultures might solve the problem.
Yeah, that was my thought too but they've used different cultures and did test their rennet to make sure it was viable. I've asked them how much they stir in the rennet because Timothy asked about that.... it's quite a mystery. they had a fail again this morning. :(
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They could test their own milk (not store bought) by making a simple hard cheese. They should do the floc test and see if they get a decent coagulation and curd set. They don't need to go any further than that if they don't want to. The floc should be 12-15 minutes. If not, they might have to run a second test and increase the rennet. If the milk flocs in a reasonable time and makes a decent curd, then the problem isn't their milk.
BUT my guess is that they need to look at some changes to their make. The milk should only be at room temperature (72F or so) before adding the culture. Heating the milk to 85F and then adding culture will allow the bacteria to produce acid too quickly. With Chevre, that effects texture in the finished cheese. They also have a timing problem. They should add rennet immediately after adding the culture. By adding the rennet later in the process, the milk is becoming much more acidic than it should, produces an acid coagulated cheese with a yogurt consistency, and the rennet doesn't function well (if at all). Think about adding rennet to yogurt. Would that produce a firm curd? After adding culture and rennet, they should let the milk sit for 6-12 hours or until there is a thin film of whey on the top and the curd mass is pulling away from the sides of the pot.
Hope this helps.
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Now down to the nitty-gritty.... but shouldn't acidification be encouraged? Isn't it the process of acidification that allows the curds and whey to stop bonding together and to float apart? If the pH is a problem perhaps a switch to foods with a different pH, to change that of the milk? Could a natural culture in the milk be interfering with added chevre cultures?
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Aaah, I think Sailor has the answer although they did at first add the rennet at the same time as the culture. We'll see what they say. Thanks for this perspective......
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Nobody's tossed this out yet, so might as well - bacteriophage?
I'm only suggesting this because its something I've read but haven't experienced. Virus which attacks the culture bacteria, stops it in its tracks. One thing that would discount this hasn't as far as I can tell been shown:
whether the culture is in fact working and acidifying the milk (I think you only said they said it "smells" like it is?)
In addition, it looks like they've only tried new/different packets of the same culture (M101), but not different brands and strains. So if its the same strain of the same species of bacteria used, it would continue to be affected if there is any phage present.
It's an environmental contaminant, and I hear can be hard to get rid of. And being environmental, could account for why you were able to produce cheese with the same milk at your place, but not your friends at theirs.
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Hi everyone. I just joined the forum. I'm one of the guys that this thread is referring to. Thanks, Tiarella, for posting our delemma. It's really frustrating because we are trying to duplicate last year's process which produced delicious chèvre almost every time.
I've read all your posts. Thanks for the advise. I've decided to go back to basics this morning. We milked the does separately, and I used a gallon out of one of the does. I heated the milk to 75, added 1/4 tsp culture, then 1 tsp of (3 drops rennet to 1/3 c water). I left out the calcium chloride on thus batch.
The change in the cheese has been so extreme this season that I am wondering if Woven Meadows may be onto something.
Sailor was right about adding the rennet later in the process. We tried that yesterday and our result was thick cream. We will be trying a hard cheese within the next couple of days.
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So this has gotten worse. The result of the above was another fail, about the consistency of buttermilk. The ph of the fresh milk was 6.7 - the of of the result was 5.6
No coagulation whatsoever.
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What an infurating, heartbreaking problem. I hope you're salvaging the milk and making ricotta or something similar!
I'm rather persuaded by the idea that it might be an infection. Have you used the same milk this year to make cheese successfully at another place as someone else on this thread suggested? If the same milk will produce vastly different results at different places.... it certainly looks like we have found a culprit.
Perhaps there is a thread online about dealing with infection. You could try to isolate it. You could try shifting cheesemaking to another part of the house. You could go the nuclear solution (well, not quite). Sterilise absolutely everything. (Ugh!) (Not guaranteed it will work either).
If the goats are the source of an infection I'm not sure there's much you can do, unless - hmmm - they suddenly develop an interest in a probiotic diet? Oh dear. Good luck!
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That you do have a pH drop down to 5.6 shows you do have lactic acid bacteria activity, so it doesn't look like phage is the issue.
And your milk starting pH doesn't suggest mastitis or high SCC - but have you checked on that yet?
No fresh goats adding colostrum to the milk?
And have you tried a stronger, hard-cheese dose of rennet to check for coagulation in that respect?
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That you do have a pH drop down to 5.6 shows you do have lactic acid bacteria activity, so it doesn't look like phage is the issue.
And your milk starting pH doesn't suggest mastitis or high SCC - but have you checked on that yet?
No fresh goats adding colostrum to the milk?
And have you tried a stronger, hard-cheese dose of rennet to check for coagulation in that respect?
I've encouraged Joe and/or Stan to chime in on these ideas. I can say that Joe is a vet so it's pretty unlikely there is mastitis involved. He can best answer freshening dates but I know it is weeks past freshening. I'm hoping they'll try a hard cheese to check flocculation. So phage can't be it if there's a pH drop? Hmmmm, I was pinning my hopes on that. I'll check with them whether they've tried different cultures, not just different packets of the same culture although I know they had tried some from Dairy Connection's "Get Culture" site and some from New England Cheesemaking.
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As I understand, bacteriophage are basically viruses that attack bacteria. They are strain specific, such that one type of phage will only infect a very specific type of bacteria. That's why you might have noticed some suppliers offer varying "types" of otherwise the same culture - like TA61 and TA62 for thermophilus culture. A cheesemaker could switch between the two strains to keep phage in check.
When bacteriophage infect a bacteria, like most viruses, they "reprogram" the bacteria to produce copies of themselves, and then basically make the bacteria explode, releasing more phage, to infect more bacteria, to produce more phage...and so on. Hence no bacteria to convert lactose to lactic acid and drop the pH. Hence a failure of the milk/cultures to acidify being a symptom of phage infection. But since acidification is happening, it seems the lactic bacteria are working more or less just fine.
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What about calcium levels in the milk? You might try adding a very small amount of calcium chloride and see what that does.
Part of the clotting of milk involves calcium ions causing proteins to bond together. When you describe 'milky whey' it makes me think, maybe you are getting an enzymatic protein bond but lack the calcium levels needed to successfully clot and bind fat and lactose out of the milk.
Also, you mention a milk ph of 6.6, that is somewhat low suggesting low calcium levels might be the case.
Try increasing the calcium intake in your goats. As a vet, you should know that primarily grass and grain fed animals need mineral supplements. I suspect they simply don't have enough calcium in their diet making a 'weak' milk.
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This is NOT a bacteriophage problem.
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I wanted to throw a quick note in before I went off to work.
Last night we tried the whole process again only this time we used raw cows milk from another dairy. The results were exactly the same, thick cream - maybe slightly coagulated? I'm off to the cheese store today to get new culture and rennet.
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Sounds like you're closing in identifying the possible culprit(s). Good luck!
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Hello Again.. its Joe. So first, thank you all so much for your suggestions. The expertise on this website is incredible.
We did try the same recipe we have been using for the chevre with a gallon of raw, cows milk. Same result. I checked with our culture supplier and it looks like I have tried using an M101, then an M100 culture this season. Although the M101 was from last year. So I think a phage is less likely. We have added rennet at the beginning (usual) and midway through incubation (a suggestion) with same result.
Our culture supplier was very interested in the problem and is sending us a free sample of flora danica and some new rennet. I will again, check pH at the beginning of the process and at the end. Ive been told if I'm not getting down to about 4.6 at the end of incubation there is likely some problem with culture or an interfering substance. We tried to remove the cleaning solution from the equation by hand milking and using the milk from the clean pail. No change. I don't think contaminant bacteria is likely as the "mixture" looks, smells and tastes as I would expect. I will keep you posted on our next attempt this weekend.
Maybe this is just the push we need to start making more hard cheeses :)
Again, thank you for all your help/suggestions and many thanks to our bff Tiarella for helping us out on this website. Have a great weekend everyone
Joe
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I would seriously consider that your cheese making area has bacteriopahge contamination as mentioned above. Is the whey kept for long periods of time near the cheesemaking surfaces?
http://www.dairyscience.info/index.php/bacteriophage-control.html (http://www.dairyscience.info/index.php/bacteriophage-control.html)
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Hmmm, are you mixing the rennet up well ahead of the make? Rennet gets weaker if it's in the water (at least chlorinated water) for a while, so it is best to mix it up and put it in right away. So, if you're being efficient and preparing the rennet ahead of the make and it's sitting around for a while, maybe that's the problem?
- Jeff
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Hmmm, are you mixing the rennet up well ahead of the make? Rennet gets weaker if it's in the water (at least chlorinated water) for a while, so it is best to mix it up and put it in right away. So, if you're being efficient and preparing the rennet ahead of the make and it's sitting around for a while, maybe that's the problem?
- Jeff
That might be it -
I had a friend try cheese at her home in town with my cultures, rennet and milk. Floc but no coag. - (White cloud in the bottom of the pan) - When she replaced the city water (chlorinated) with which she diluted the rennet with distilled on her next make it was all good.
If not chlorine in the water are vessels retaining chlorine from a disinfecting rinse?
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Sounds like you're on to it now. Boil some water ahead of time, sterilize your container with some of the water, then replace with some new boiled water and let it cool. Boiling will remove the chlorine. Add your rennet to your cooled boiled water just before you want to add it to the milk. If it is the chlorine, this should do it for you.
- Jeff
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Better yet. Don't use chlorine. There are several options. I use StarSan because it is no rinse.
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I use boiling water for everything, avoiding chemicals at all costs. I find it to be a generally sound practice (but it does create some work)
The only chemical cleanser I will use is vinegar, heated and mixed with non-iodized salt (just adding salt to vinegar won't do much, but when you cook them together you get HCL in much larger amounts. You need an energy input to drive the reaction, or a catalyst like copper. Also, cooking gets rid of some of the water and concentrates the acid to a small degree)
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We changed last week to a microbial rennet (2 drops to 1/4 c water), and also changed the culture to a florra danica (1/4 tsp).
We've also started to treat our heavy producing doe for subclinical lactational ketosis/ hypo calcemia with a propylene glycol drench. Our theory is her high production is placing a huge metabolic demand which is altering her calcium levels - which alters the proteins in her milk. We've had the milk tested last week and ruled everything else out.
It looks like we may have made some progress. The curd set up today! We should know tomorrow am if we finally have chèvre!
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So it was casein deficiency after all! Good to hear you're heading in the right direction!
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dear friends
1.for white chevere cheese of goats the incubation time is about 20-30 hours,thats depends on the temp. of the environment
2.the amount of rennet depends on the supplier instruction but is very little to white chesse like 1 drop for all the amount of7-10 liters = 2 gallons
3 if the milk is of good quality do you pastorate the milk??? if yes not high then 71-72 c degree
4.allwayes the crude of goat is very delicate and not firm like cow milk so you don't cut it but filtered it throe muslin or other kind of cloth for 5-10 hours
5 then you proceed.....
* add calcium - 0.2 gram per liter or 1 gram per 2 gallons
hope I added something to your problem
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So new rennet and new culture.
Now you might never know which one was the culprit.
Glad to hear you are getting cheese again!
:)