Baling off whey

[lacaseus]

Water/whey has a high heat capacity; it takes a lot of energy to heat it up. I was having trouble heating my 8-gallon batches as fast as I wanted using a system of baling water out of the jacket tub and heating it on the stove in between stirring every 5 minutes or so. It occurred to me that I could make this heating easier and save energy by decreasing how much material I'm trying to heat. So recently I've been playing around with removing whey from above the curds during cooking. I can easily decrease the whey volume to about half early in the cooking without uncovering the curds. This is mostly for cheddar-type cheeses, but I've started doing it with smaller batches of citric acid mozzarella. I know the mozza is still turning out fine because I eat it fresh, but I'm wondering if anyone knows a reason why this practice would be a bad idea for aged cheeses. Recipes usually tell you to drain whey only at the end of cooking.

[Bantams]

I did this for several years in small commercial size batches (25-35 gallons) because I was somewhat limited by the vat's heating ability. The only difference that I noticed is that it can be a bit harder to stir the curds to prevent clumping, and you have less gravity at work on the curds (though it depends on vessel shape and width) and so curds can retain a bit more moisture. You may notice you have a harder time condensing curds at the end if they don't have the assistance of all that whey pressure at the bottom of the vat.