use of slurries

[farmboy236]

  Bear with me guys, rank beginner here.  When using a slurry how much of the parent cheese do I need to use?  When using slurries is it best to inoculate the milk or the curd?  Is it "necessary" to use additional cultures or can the slurry alone suffice to make a decent end product?  Depending on what I make will it give me PC and or PR coverage?

[WovenMeadows]

Hmm, the only use of a cheese slurry I'm familiar with is to inoculate the milk with a mold, namely blue penicillin or white penicillin types. Generally the lactic-acid starter bacteria are pretty much dead in the finished, aged cheese, so a slurry would not introduce the requisite starter bacteria to the milk. You still need the frozen cultures, mother culture/bulk starter, leftover whey, etc, for that. Plus, with a slurry, you also risk introducing any host of other bacteria, molds, and yeast into the milk, so proceed with caution.

[Salilah]

I *think* you can use this for e.g. the wrinkly rind on a bloomy rind cheese - at least I hope so, as I'm planning to try this with a Chabichou tomorrow!!
I don't know about whether you also need the culture for flavour - I'm using Flora Danica
The slurry will be for replacing the Geo - this particular cheese doesn't need PC
Sorry can't help more - my first time of doing it!

[farmboy236]

Thank you for the replies.  So, if I culture with a mesophillic C-101 for a starter, then used a slurry of my target chees, how much of that target cheese do I use to make the slurry?  Do I add the slurry at  the same time as the starter or directly to the curds?

[JeffHamm]

Hi Farmboy236,

I only use a slurry to get the mould for blues or white mould cheeses.  What I do for the white mould (in a 10 or 11 litre make) is cut a wedge from a store bought cam about the size you might put on a cracker if you were being generous; so, maybe 1/8 of the wheel?  Then, I gently scrap the white mould off using the back of a sterilized steak knife.  I put this into some distilled water (you don't need much, but I don't measure it), and stir it up with a sterilized fork until the water is a bit cloudy and the chunky bits are more or less clear.  I try and remove the chunks.  The water I then just pour into the milk when I add my starter culture.  I do this just before using it, so the mould isn't sitting in the water for a long time. 

For blues, it's more or less the same thing.  I scrap the blue mould off the outter edge of the cheese, or from the veins.  You won't need a lot if your blue mould is alive. 

- Jeff