Mutschil pH

[bansidhe]

I have my Muschli in the press.  I have checked pH several times using pH strips. However, according to the strips the pH has not changed.

I did think it got to be 5.9 right before I cut the curds.  But when I checked just a few minutes later it was back to the 6.5-6.8 color.

:-(. Anyone else have a similar experience?  (I am going to try the stretch test with a curd I took.  I dipped it in some boiling whey and it was almost stretchy...  so I'll keep trying that.

[paulabob]

My inexpensive meter is so bad I have to recalibrate it several times to get consistent numbers during just one cheese.  I like the idea of the stretch test more than just the pH.  Or maybe I'll bite the bullet and buy a $100 meter.

I did this cheese recently.   It was in the press 7 hours (I fell asleep!  oh no!), then I popped it in fridge overnight.  pH was 5.57 next morning, so I brined it then. (target was 5.3/5.4...I just didn't trust my meter not to overacidify the cheese). It ended up pretty nice after 4 weeks aging.  I've got it still aging and will test again soon.

[bansidhe]

Nice.  Since I have 0 experience... even thing like the stretch test I can get wrong.  Sign.  Anyway, I am going to assume the pH is still 6 or more...  Though that seems really odd.. I would have thought it to be much lower.

This recipe uses a very small amount of culture.  Since I used Raw milk I used a bit less.  I also used a tiny bit less of the rennet ..  but it took
37 minutes to floc!  Spo weird because my past few cheese have flocked surprisingly early.  Sign.  Anyway, I did cut it at 90min or so.  The break looked good to me.  Given the extra floc time, I really would have thought about extra acid.  Hmmmm. 

Did you pop it in the cold fridge or the 50F/10C cheese cave fridge?  I had planned on putting it in the cheese cave but if you did the regular fridge, I may do that

[Bantams]

Alpine cheeses have no appreciable pH change during the cook portion. pH should drop in the press to about 5.4 (don't quote me on that, don't have my notes here now).