Crottin and rennet mistake

[steffb503]

Or let's call it an experiment!
I was making a goat milk Crottin. I make this weekly. Yesterday I had a malfunction adding rennet. It should have been 3 drops in 1/4 cup then 1 Tbls added to cultured milk. Well I ended up with a squirt directly into the milk.
I will be going out to see what i ended up with in a little while but thought I would get some opinions before that.
Normally I would drain for a day or two, remove from molds, salt and age for about 10 days.
Any thoughts on what I will end up with or if I should proceed differently?

[mikekchar]

My guess:  Increasing the amount of rennet will decrease the flocc time, leading to a firmer curd at a given pH.  So if you let it go down to 4.8 or whatever, the curd will be firmer meaning that it will hold more moisture.  This will make an extra soupy crottin.

I suspect the cure is to make sure to cut the curds before you move them to the molds (if they aren't already in the molds).  This will allow it to drain better.  But I'm purely speculating here based on absolutely no experience with making that kind of cheese :-)

[Susan38]

Well since we're speculating here I thought I'd chime in.  I'm thinking your curds with extra rennet might be quite "rubbery" in texture and I wonder if they will have trouble knitting together?  And I have read that too much rennet may cause a bitter taste.

Or conversely, maybe the cheese will turn out quite well and you will have a new go-to recipe  ;D.

I can't think of anything I'd do differently at this point except monitor more frequently and adjust drain times as needed.  And if the flavor is bitter, can you add herbs or more salt or something to help mellow that out a bit?

Please let us know how it turns out!

[steffb503]

Well the curds looked almost normal, maybe a bit softer than usual.
It is in the molds draining and everything seems the same.
Nope can't ever duplicate it! I have no idea how much rennet I squirted in.
I will keep you posted.