Cultured Buttermilk versus a Manufactured Mesophilic Starter Culture?

[Stuart]

I'm new to this board so forgive me if this was discussed elsewhere.

I've been using cultured buttermilk in my attempts to make Neufchatel. My second attempt was pretty tasty.

Is it better to use a mesophilic starter? What's going to be the end result difference?  How quickly does refridgerated cultured buttermilk lose potency as a starter? What I have is a week old now.

Thanks in advance.

[MrsKK]

Welcome to the Cheeseforum, Stuart!

I use clabbered milk (raw milk that is allowed to thicken to yogurt consistency) as a culture for making Neufchatel as well as for hard cheeses and I've had great results.  It is basically the same thing as cultured buttermilk.

I've never tried using mesophilic starter for Neufchatel, but have for hard cheeses, where I've actually recognized more flavor in the cheese when I use clabber vs the meso starter.

I will let someone else field the question on lasting power of buttermilk.

Again, Welcome!

[hydromojo]

Stuart - I'm an amateur like yourself. I dont have an option but to use buttermilk and curd as my meso & thermo cultures since I dont know where to get the others.
I have had good success with the neufchatel and farmers cheeses using these. I use freshly made buttermilk (the old fashioned churning method),allowed to sit overnight to develop sufficent acidity.

[Alex]

I use only buttermilk as meso and yogurt as thermo.

[zenith1]

Hi Stuart-check out the library section of the forum. John has collected a lot of information about starters there.

[Cheese Head]

Stuart, welcome to the forum, good question. In my mind using a manufactured mesophilic culture is really the next step up the technology curve as they are more specific bacteria, depending on what you buy. I made many cheeses with cultured buttermilk before buying my first manufactured meso culture. Hard to tell the taste difference as too many factors in my cheese making ;D.

hydromojo, lost of stores listed here, some probably ship to Bangalore. Also, while I don't see it on the listed website, this member said they are India based and supply ingredients.

[hydromojo]

John - thanks for the info. Will follow up on this. The yellow pages here can be quite misleading so I gave up after a few attempts  ;D

[DeejayDebi]

I don't think I have seen anything on this forum about clabbering milk might be a good thing to post as it works well for many cheeses and it's very practical.

[Alex]

Is clabbered milk and buttermilk the same thing?

[MrsKK]

Debi - Thanks for the suggestion.  I know I posted detailed instructions for someone, either on this forum or elsewhere, so I will look for that and make a new thread for it.

Alex - Buttermilk is what is left over when cream is churned into butter.   Butter is the fat, so buttermilk is very low fat, yet nutritious.  I have clabbered buttermilk (allowed it to sit long enough to thicken) from my raw milk/cream, and it seems to thicken much more quickly than skimmed milk does.  I generally only clabber skim milk, as I like to use the cream for butter and ice cream making.

[DeejayDebi]

I read somewhere ... either the Farmstead book or the Cheese Makers Manual that if you mix your starter with part of the milk in a mason jar and get it going first while the milk comes up to temperature it has more time to multiply (?) grow (?) and is less of a shock to the cultures when making cheese and produces a better cheese. Whom ever it was they make all their cheeses that way.