Here are the photos of the make.... After warming the milk to 99*F we added the Calcium Chloride and Su Casu culture....
During the 45 min. ripening, we covered it with a towel and maintained the temperature....
After adding 1/4 tsp. of Rennett, we used the spinning bowl Flocculation test.... It gelled in 8 minutes, so I adjusted the recipe to 3/16 tsp....
After a Floc. Multiple of 2.5 X, (20 minutes) we expected and got a slightly "sloppy" break....
I cut the curd into 1" columns, and jiggled the vat gently to separate them and start expelling the whey during a 5 minute resting period....
I then used my horizontal curd cutter to cut the columns into 1/4" thick layers, and rested another 5 minutes....
During that 5 minutes I twisted and swirled the vat gently to separate the cubes and accelerate the release of the whey....
I used a balloon whisk with the wires bent to a 1/4" spacing to break up the curds to pea sized....
This was followed by 15 minutes of stirring, still at 99*F, to get the curds as uniform as possible and continue whey release....
The curds sank quickly as soon as you stopped stirring them, with just a slight tendency to clump together....
At this point, the curds were fairly uniform, firmed up nicely, and not easily damaged.... Now they were raised to 131*F over 45 minutes (~3*F each 5 min.)....
The photo below was taken at the beginning of heating, by the end they were half that size and cooked completely through....
The next stage was to remove the vat from the heat, cover it and allow to cool slowly over a 2 hour period.... This causes the curds to shrink even more and increase in acidity....
After the 2 hours, they were drained and salted, then put into the NEC Small Cylinder mold and pressed as in the recipe (4 stages)....
This photo is half way through the third pressing, when almost all of the whey had been drained....
After 2 hours of pressing the rind was almost completely knit (photo below), and the cheese was then returned to the press for overnight....
In the morning, the rind was tight and the cheese was very firm.... It weighed 1.5 lbs. before drying...
After a couple of days of drying, we waxed this cheese.... and put it away for 6 months before sampling a quarter of it....
We will consume a quarter each 6 months, with the last portion aging a total of 2 years.... So now the wait begins to find out if you can salt the curds of a Parmesan instead of brining it, and what the result will be....
Bob