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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => RENNET COAGULATED - Hard Cooked (Swiss) => Topic started by: mokumeguy on September 15, 2008, 02:46:43 AM
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1- Started right after I finished my cottage cheese on Saturday. Got 1.5 gal fresh milk plus 1.5 gal skimmed milk from yesterday. 3 gal total, part skimmed, raw Jersey milk. Start warming to 90F.
2- Get everything in place. Dissolve 1 tsp Propionibacterium 50 in .5 cup milk.
Dissolve 3/4 tablet rennet (Marshall M50) in .25 cup water.
Find PH Meter and wisks
Pour one organic porter to sustain cheese farmer through ordeal
3- Took 45 minutes to get milk up to 90F. 1.5 gal was at 33F to start. When stable at 90F I add almost 1 pint thermo culture that I slowly thawed since yesterday. Stir gently. Sip Porter.
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4- Record beginning pH at 6.65
5- Wait ten minutes, take ph - 6.53. Decide to wait another 10 min.
6- pH @ 20 min is 6.54. wait another 10 minutes
7- ph @ 30 min is still just 6.54. Finish porter. Crack another. Hmmn.
8- Add rennet, because I'm afraid to wait any longer. The recipe says to ripen for 10 minutes.
9- Recipe says clean break at 40 minutes. I have very clean break at 30 minutes. pH is still just 6.5
10-Cut curd into smallest pieces I can and start raising temp.
11-Stirring curds with whisk constantly, while breaking up into smaller pieces. 40 minutes to 120F. ph is still only 6.2. Is that beer gone already?
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12- Let cooked curds rest 5 minutes. Started draining.
13- Curds are tiny and clumping. I can basically pick the whole thing up to put it in the press.
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14-Recipe says to press at 10 lbs for 15 minutes. I can't even get the follower to make full contact at 20 lbs.
Switch to an IPA, and decide to go for 30 lbs and 15 minutes.
15-Turn cheese and press at 30 lbs for an hour. There is no visible whey coming out.
16-Turn again with the intention of pressing at 50 lbs for 12 hours, like the recipe says. After there is not a drop of whey in 2 hours I decide it's had enough and weigh it in at about 2.2 lbs. Not a great yield.
17- Put cheese into brine for 12 hour soaking. In the mean time I've made 1.5 lbs of very nice Ricotta with the whey from the mornings cottage cheese and this Gruyere. Maybe I will post the pics later.
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Lookin' good Michael, lookin' good. So how long are you hoping to age this for?
By the way, I love your set up.
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Thanks Tea.
I guess the aging will depend on a few things, like if I see barreling or it starts to crack. It's supposed to go at least 8 months. A couple of things worry me about the way the cheese went.
I think my pH was still too high at the time I added the rennet.
I think it set too fast, mostly set at 5 minutes.
The curds were very tough.
Low yield.
This is only my 7th attempt at a hard cheese, and I am still trying to figure out how to get a better yield.
All of my cheeses have set very fast, with firm or tough curds at lower temps and shorter cooking times than the recipes describe. I keep lowering the amount of rennet, but I think it still needs to go lower. I may go back to freeze dried culture to eliminate that as a problem. The other variable is that I am using raw milk,
which I believe changes the way cultures work. Anyone else using raw milk?
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I assume thats the cow that provided the milk?
Sal
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Yep. We've been milking her for almost 4 months now. Once a day, calf sharing at the moment, and getting
almost 2 gal a day. So when we ween the calf it could go up to almost 4 gal. Thats a lot of cheese.
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Yes I use raw milk given to me by a friend. I find I get a much better yield from raw milk than I do store milk, but having only used store bought milk a couple of time, and not being happy with the result, I haven't played around enough with it to see. I do know the the set, yield and flavours are completely different.
By the way, your cow looks the same as our Shirley, although our's is still a baby and spoilt by the kids. DH lit a bon fire last night, and Shirley sat around it with the kids.
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Very cool Michael thats great.
CH have you ever had a thread that started with a picture of the very cow at the beginning that produces the milk??
Sal
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Michael, would like to thank you for sharing your input and photo essay on your making of the Gruyere cheese. this is the style of cheese im most interested in. to date i have made five attempts at the 'Alpine' types of cheese with the last one being the best.
if you don't mind me asking, what recipe are you using ?
while studying about this particular family of cheeses its my understanding that the PH level only starts to drop substantially after the final pressing. my notes indicate that the PH dropped to 5.5 after 12 hrs of pressing.
the starter that im using is a store bought plain yogurt with an active culture. the process involves bringing the (store bought :-((() milk to room temp, adding the starter then ripening overnight at 68*. my PH reading at that point was 6.4 added 1 tablet of rennet (dissolved in water) to four gallons of milk. it takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs for a clean break. the PH is still 6.4 at this point but drops at the start of draining and pressing.
from what i have read using raw milk is quite different than using store bought pasturized milk. i have absolutely no experience with raw milk.
be looking forward to hearing about your progress with this cheese.
reg
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Hi Reg.
I love these style of cheese, as do the rest of my family. So making them successfully would be a great thing for me. My first attempt was a simple Swiss, trying the recipe from Ricki's book. It was pretty much a flop, but I still have it in the cave. I got only a tiny 1.5 lb block. But it is barreling like you wouldn't believe.
The Gruyere recipe is from The Tim Smith book, Artisan Cheese.
There were only two changes I made. He was using 1/2 tsp propionic per gal while the instructions for these cheese on the package and in Ricki's book calls for 1/16 tsp per gal. Big difference. So I used 1 tsp for 3 gal.
The other thing I did was to skim 1.5 gal of the milk, because I don't know what the fat content of my Jersey milk is, but it's probably higher than store bought whole milk.
I didn't get to follow his pressing procedure because the curd was so firm and dry already. It's been in the cave at 55F for two days and it's already starting to barrel! I hope it doesn't crack on me.
When you say you let it ripen overnight, about how many hours is that? All the recipes I read call for ten minutes then add rennet. I suspect that is way too short. I know I get fantastic taste and yield from my cottage cheese and it goes for 24 hours and never needs rennet at all.
The starter I am using is this thermophilic (http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/137-Thermophilic-Italian-1-packet.html) that I culture in pint jars. I am thinking about getting this one. (http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/173-LH100-Thermophilic-.html)
I am going to carefully read through all of your Alpine posts and then maybe I can ask you some intelligent questions.
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morning Michael. it looks like the LH100 culture would be the way to go but it is not cheep by the time you buy the culture and pay shipping. guess the other way to look at it is if you go through the trouble of making yor own cheese you want the best ingredients.
the yogurt i use for the culture is called Bulkan regular/plain and it cost $.67 per 4 gal batch. so far the cheese ends up with a pretty good taste but not sure if that is exactly the way it should taste. did buy a Austrian Alpine style cheese to try and compare the flavours/taste and thought the home made cheese was much better even after only 8 weeks of aging.
may try a few different cultures later this fall when i get time to make more Alpine style cheeses
reg
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Ya, the cultures are spendy, but I re-culture them and plan on getting dozens of cheese out of the initial purchase. I am used to doing that with the yeast cultures I use for brewing beer. If I am careful I can keep them going for many years.
Here are a few picks of the gruyere so far. It is the one on the right in the first shot. You can also see my baby swiss in the middle, poor thing. And you can see the barreling already going in the second.
I plan on trying to do another one this weekend.
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good looking cheese there Michael. the Swiss has really barreled lol.
are you using a wine fridge for your cave and if so how are you finding it so far ?
reg
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Hopefully the wine fridge will just be temporary, until I get my real cave done. I have a commercial 8' x 10'
walk-in fridge that I am trying to get set up before winter. It was a steal, I got it for free from a big filter company who needed a bigger one and gave it to the first person who could come and haul it away. Once that is done I will be set. I am finding it hard to keep a consistent temp or humidity level in the little fridge, because it is out in the cow barn where it can go from 60 to 100 in six hours.
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Hey Michael,
They look great!! I made a gruyere today that looks identical to yours, so hopefully we are both eating some nice cheese in a year or so. I have a question for you. My probionic sherminii has a label that says to add 1/16t per gallon, but the recipe calls for 1t for two gallons. Did yours have a label with amounts listed? It was cool to hear the little bubbles when I stirred in the rennet.
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Yes, there was that label with the 1/16 tsp per gal. I haven't figured out yet why my recipe calls for so much. I know that I only used 1/4 tsp in my 3 gal swiss and it's ballooning into a ball, so I am not sure you need that much to make Gruyere. It is rather expensive. I think the next time I will use 1/2 tsp and see if I still get barreling after 2 days like I did this time.
Now that I know I was using too much rennet I will probably not let this first on go for the full time.
I might just wait to see if I can get the red rind and open it 30 days after that.
What was your yield on the latest one?
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I just took it out of the brine and it weighed in at 2lb 9oz. I used 3/16 of the PSh and it looks a little puffy already. I use 1% milk from Whole Foods and add in heavy cream to make it whole milk as Ricki Carrol suggests. Both are not ultra pasturized. So far it has produced good results.
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Well, that gives me even more confidence to use less PS next time. Now I wonder if the recipe was a typo. Maybe I will try another one this weekend. And that is a great yield you got for 2 gal. I am still working on that part.
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My yield was from 3 gallons, sorry I should have specified. I checked recipes from Home Cheese Making and Making Artisan Cheese. The emmental, swiss and gruyere recipes all called for a teaspoon of PS. I called the place I bought it from and they told me to go by the package. My Penicillium Candidum also has a label with amounts that are different from the recipes. It is frustrating because you don't find out if you made the right decision for 8 months and until then you keep producing the same recipe not knowing if all your cheese will even be edible. I guess as long as it does not go rancid it is a success at this stage of my journey.
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morning guys, been following your conversation here and finding some good info from your experiences, thanks. been doing a lot of studying with regards to Gruyere cheeses lately. there sure are quite a few different styles thats for sure. one article/recipe also adds another culture, helveticus to the mix. not sure what this culture beings to the party
the other info i found interesting is that the Swiss version of Gruyere has few or no holes while the French version has plenty of big holes. the regions of France produce a few different textured Gruyere cheeses, Comte and Beaufort being the two most popular. Comte with its large holes and Beaufort with few very fine eyes or none at all. this is a complicated cheese lol
will be getting back at it soon and going with the PS because i like to see the holes after the cheese is cut
have a good one
reg
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Tea, I just read this post do you have any pics of your baby cow, Shirley?
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Yes I do why?
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LOL I love animals and would love to see some pics of your cow.
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OK I'll see if I can find where I put them.
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Don't go to any bother, I just meant if you already had them digitally on your comp.
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Ok here is Shirley. When she came to us she was an orphan. Her mother had died and they found her wandering around the paddock. She she was quite emancipated.
She is probably three times that size now, and still follows the kids around like a puppy dog.
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And you wondered why I wanted to see pictures...she's so cute. And I think you mean emaciated, you said emancipated (which see was because here mother let her go, in a sort of way).
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Yes I probably do mean emaciated, lol my bad.
Well the horns have grown and they are nice and sharp, and she thinks that the kids are her buddies, so she is forever butting them and rough housing with them.
We are in the process for fencing in some more area, as she is getting too big to play with the kids.
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My Avatar was my baby. Red Siberian Husky, Yoshi.
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Ok here is Shirley. When she came to us she was an orphan. Her mother had died and they found her wandering around the paddock. She she was quite emancipated.
She is probably three times that size now, and still follows the kids around like a puppy dog.
She's really pretty. I love those swiss cows.