You know how, sometimes when your brain is on cruise control, and you ask it to do some math? And it says, “Yeah, I can do that.”? But it stays in cruise control? More on that in a minute…
My recipe is a mashup from several sources, with most of it being inspired by the Alp/Al efforts here. Additional input came from CHR Hansen, and a couple others.
This was an 8 gallon make, started at about 9:00 AM. Brought milk up to temperature with culture cubes floating merrily. Added CaCl and P. shermanii while milk was heating. PH at 90 °F was 6.53 (with bulk cultures melted).
As soon as the milk was up to temperature I added the rennet. Floc time was 12 minutes, and with 3X factor, cut curds to approximately 1 inch and let them rest a couple minutes. Started stirring with a whisk, aiming for a ¼ inch cut. Curds were already starting to clump after another 20 minutes or so of stirring. Heated milk to 122 to 123°F over about 35 minutes, so temperature rise control was good.
Curds got REALLY sticky during the planned ½ hour stir. By the time the pH was down to 6.4, the curds were past the sticky point and very firm. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have worried about pH, and would probably have settled the curds right after heating, based on curd texture and stickiness.
After consolidating curds, transferred them to the 8 inch mold and started pressing under whey, with 10 pounds for 10 minutes X2 and 20 pounds for 20 minutes once. Removed mold from whey and pressed at 40 pounds for 30 minutes.
Remember the math skills mentioned above? Alp specifically says 8 pounds of weight per pound of cheese. Easy! 8 gallons of milk should give an 8 pound cheese. 8 pound cheese? 8 pounds of weight per? Yep. 80 pounds. And to make matters even worse, I didn’t get 8 pounds of cheese, my curds were so dry.
Oh well. Continuing the saga… Pressed and re-dressed at slowly extending intervals until pH was at 5.4, which happened at around 11:00 this morning. (26 hours).
8 gallons of milk only yielded 2600 grams of cheese, for about a 9% yield. I’m sure this is solely due to over-cooking. The cheese is being dry salted with 27 grams of salt as we speak. Then heading for cool storage and daily baths.
Sorry about the dearth of photos for this one. It seemed like I was busier than usual.
Larry