I hope to do a 12-gallon Parmesan make this coming weekend. I've never done a 12-gallon make, never made a parmesan (never used a thermophilic culture, for that matter...), and never used my 10 inch Gouda mold before. As you can see, there's a lot of room for messing up here. I'd like to present my plan for comments/critique/inputs.
12 gallons p/h skim milk
2 quarts heavy cream
2 cups thermophilic "bulk culture" (made the night before)
3 tsp CaCl
1 1/2 tsp rennet
1/2 tsp lipase
- Heat milk to 92 F
- Add culture + lipase, let sit for 5 minutes
- Add CaCl, then rennet
- Floc multiplier of 2
- Cut slowly to bean sized curds
- rest 10 minutes
- stir and heat to 124 F over 60 minutes
- let settle
- drain and hoop at pH 6.4
- press, light to heavy until pH 5.4
- brine
So, my questions/concerns:
- I've never used lipase before, is 1/2 a tsp a good place to start? It's labeled, "mild".
- My milk has been starting at fairly low pHs, like 6.5 +/- 0.05. How much lower than 6.4 can I drain before I start having texture or flavor issues? (I know that's a somewhat subjective question...just looking for other people's thoughts)
- What do you think of dry salting this? I'm not sure what I could brine this in (my bathtub?
) that wouldn't require me making a lot more brine than I want to.
- Other thoughts?
Thanks!
Mike