Ok, I took my first attempt at kefalotyri out of the press this morning. I basically followed Bob's very detailed recipe, with a few "modifications".
The biggest modification is that after heating the milk, adding the CaCl2, lipase and mesophilic culture, I realized that I had completely run out of thermophilic culture (DOH! - idiot!). So I attempted to compensate by blending some greek yogurt with NC water and adding that to the milk, hoping that would provide a thermophilic culture. We'll see.
This was also my first time using the flocculation method (which works exactly as advertised, much to my surprise), using this big a volume of milk in my new 5 gal pot, using my new 8" Tomme hoop and using my new DIY wall-mount cheese press (picture below - I'll post details in a separate post).
During pressing, the cheese was very wet and soft, so I didn't flip it because I was worried it was going to fall apart. Even after the 50 lb pressing, I thought it was still too delicate. So I just increased to 100 lbs (2 psi) without flipping overnight.
For some reason I still can't get the inline image formatting to work when I paste a URL from my Google Photo account, so I'm posting them as attachments. Any advice would be welcome.
- My new DIY wall-mount cheese press. With two 8 lb jugs as weight, this configuration is 100 lbs (2 psi).
- The kefalotyri after overnight pressing at 100 lbs. There are some creases from the cheesecloth, and it still feels a bit fragile. It's still slowly weeping some clear liquid, so I'm hoping it will firm up as it dries.