Author Topic: What to do when coagulation fails  (Read 4579 times)

Offline erfurkan

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What to do when coagulation fails
« on: October 19, 2022, 11:00:16 AM »
Hello everyone,

This morning I decided to make my first Jarlsberg.

I used 10l of raw not homogenized milk.
Last night I have heated the milk to 75C and covered the pot with lid and secured with plastic wrap to cool until morning.

  • At the morning, I added the cultures and let it ripen a bit, and added the CaCl and rennet.
  • At first I added 3ml of rennet with 3ml of CaCl.
  • After 2 hours and 40 minutes of checking for clean break, I didn't get any.
  • The consistency was of a very runny yogurt and there was no separation and no whey at all
  • I then decided to try my luck and added 3ml of more rennet, stirred gently for 20 seconds and heated the milk a little bit while doing so
  • As soon as I started stirring, all the yogurt consistency went away and it had the consistency of a warm cream, slightly thicker than milk

My question is, what may have caused it and what to do in these kind of situations?

I know my rennet is not gone bad because 4 days ago I made mozzarella with it. The milk is from a different place then I usually buy from though.

You can see the timeline in the following table:

TimePhTDescription
09:30-33CThermo & Propionic added
10:506.4931.4CRennet & CaCl added
13:306.3930CLittle to no coagulation, added more rennet and stirred, heated gently to 32C
« Last Edit: October 19, 2022, 11:08:11 AM by erfurkan »

Offline Tedybar

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Re: What to do when coagulation fails
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2022, 02:17:48 PM »
I am not an expert, at this point I would compost...  Why did you heat your milk so high?  My guess that is your issue.  If you wanted to pasteurize the milk first low temp pasteurization (heat to 62.7 C and hold temp for half an hour then rapidly cool) is best for cheesemaking.  Once again, I'm not an expert, but I've never seen a recipe for Jarlsberg that has you leaving the milk out overnight before using it in the cheese.  I believe it should have been refrigerated.

Offline mikekchar

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Re: What to do when coagulation fails
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2022, 03:59:18 AM »
At 75C, it only takes 12 seconds to pasteurise the milk.  You *really* need to cool it down in a hurry because over time it's going to break down the proteins (which is probably what happened here).  If you want a longer process, heat the milk to 63 C, hold it for 30 minutes and cool it down as quickly as you can.  This will be more forgiving.

Offline erfurkan

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Re: What to do when coagulation fails
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2022, 12:14:10 PM »
Thanks, both of you.

I am not able to cool down quickly enough so I let it cool through the night. The kitchen was around 15C but the milk was still 30C at 9 am :)

So would the best way to pasteurize for me would be to heat 63C and let it sit until cooled?

I have been making my cheeses from raw milk before. But recently some elderly relatives started eating my cheese so I wanted to be on the safe side for them.

My next two questions are
  • How safe is raw milk cheese if you are not sure about the cow's health and you are going to age the cheese?
  • What is the best way to pasteurize without being able to cool the milk quickly?

I had to make milk ricotta out of the batch if anyone is wondering. It did not set well.

Offline mikekchar

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Re: What to do when coagulation fails
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2022, 02:02:25 PM »
I think going to 63 C will help the cheesemaking, but I think the letting it sit overnight at high temperatures will not contribute to its safety.  You can make a chiller very easily by buying some copper tubing and bending it into a coil.  Run cool water through it and it will chill your milk in 10 minutes or so.  Home beer brewers use them all the time.  Search for plans for a "wort chiller".  Some of them are very simple.

Raw milk is difficult to talk about.  Pasteurised milk is about 1000x less likely to cause disease than raw milk.  However, it's *still* quite unlikely.  The US has about 2 million drinkers of raw milk.  It typically gets about 1-2 deaths a year on average.  Normally there are no deaths for years and then you'll get 10 all at the same time.  You don't only have to worry about death, though.  You can suffer serious organ failure as well and long term health problems.  But again, it's very, very unlikely.  It's like the lottery.  *Somebody* will "win", but it's very unlikely to be you.  From a public health perspective, banning raw milk makes sense to some people because you will guarantee to have less deaths.  To people who want to drink raw milk, it doesn't make sense because they were already unlikely to get ill.  It's important to realise it's not just elderly or unwell people who are at risk, but the risk is still low.

Having said that, raw milk has bacteria in it.  Some is the bacteria that we *want* -- bacteria that will make yogurt or butter milk.  Some of it is bacteria that we don't care about.  Some of it will make you ill.  When you are working with raw milk, you want to keep it in a state where the bacteria you want is favored.  If it grows quickly, then the other bacteria can't survive as easily -- they all compete for the same resources.  I don't work with raw milk, so I'm not the best person to talk to about this.  However, generally you want to use the milk as quickly as you can after it has been milked.  If you can't use it within 4 hours, then my understanding is that you should cool it.  But either way, you want to use the milk within a day or so.

Pasteurised milk is a double edged sword.  It has no bacteria in it at first.  However, that means that it is vulnerable to bad bacteria.  If you have milk that you've pasteurised and you just let it sit at warm temperatures, it *will* pick up bacteria and that bacteria will grow.  It doesn't have the *good* bacteria that's in raw milk to compete with it.  Both situations are risky and I couldn't tell you which one has more risk.  For making aged cheese, my own personal preference would be to use raw milk.  However, you will have to do your own research to decide what makes the most sense to you.  By far the least risky is to pasteurise and cool quickly.  After that, it's hard to say.

Sorry I can't give you absolute answers.  It's not that kind of thing.  I hope you find a way of working that works well for you!