New to cheesemaking, may have messed up ingredients

[Possum-Pie]

I am making my first cheese an Asiago. I wanted to start small as it was my first so I scaled down a recipe to 2 Gallons of milk. Warmed it properly, added thermophilic culture. waited 45 min, then got messed up. I had my ingredients lined up...Lipase for flavor, (not in the recipe but I wanted to add it), Calcium Chloride, and finally Liquid rennet.

After the culture matured, I added what I THOUGHT was the lipase, waited 15 min, then went to add Ca. Chloride and rennet. When I opened the lid, there was NOT milk, but whey on the top. I immediately knew that I had accidentally added the rennet instead of the lipase. I added the Ca Chloride and lipase immediately and gently stirred the already coagulating curd. which was on the bottom. I then let it sit for 45 min, and began cutting the curd. I drained the whey, put the curd in the cheesecloth and press, and hoped for the best. Did the adjustments of PSI as the recipe called for, and after the final 12 hr 50 lb press, had a nice looking, firm cheese without noticeable defects. Brined, dried, and it is currently in a cave for a 3-week age. It LOOKS fine, but does anyone know if it really is ok? I am crossing my fingers that it doesn't fail after all of this work...

Every video Ive seen has showed the curd coagulated on top and then cut. My curd was on the bottom. It only had 15 min to coagulate before I realized my mistake but when I grabbed a handful of pea-sized whey, it seemed solid and fell apart when I dropped it back into the pot. 

[Possum-Pie]

Nobody? I was hoping for some guidance or reassurance...It is about a week into "aging" and looks good, but does anyone have some instruction? I made a Mozzarella today and was VERY cautious about adding ingredients as needed, again the whey is on top and the Curd is on the bottom. Every video I watch has the curd on top and easily cut and visualized as coagulated. Please someone give me guidance.

[mikekchar]

Sorry that you didn't get traction on your post.  To be honest, it's a bit hard to reply    And please don't get discouraged by what I'm going to write here.  I'm trying to explain why I didn't reply earlier.

There are a couple of things that come to mind.

I added what I THOUGHT was the lipase, waited 15 min [...] When I opened the lid, there was NOT milk, but whey on the top.

After 15 minutes, I can see the milk coagulating, but if you're getting whey on top, then you have added *much too much* rennet, or maybe the milk is *much too acidic*... or something.  Normally it will just flocculate in about 12 minutes and then you have to wait about 20-30 minutes until it's ready to cut.  You wouldn't get whey floating on top until an hour in.  So... What's going on with your cheese? I have no idea unless you just added about 10 times more rennet than you needed (which is very possible to do).  Or your milk was sour (which is also very possible).

But then, I think.  Maybe your description is not quite right.  "whey on the top" might mean something different to you than it does to me.  I'd need to see the recipe.  I'd need to know what rennet you used (and what IMCU it is).  I'll probably need to explain what IMCU is so that you can tell me, because there is virtually no beginner that knows what it is :-).  I'm not blaming you.  It's just that replying to this post means I've got quite a lot of work ahead of me, likely.

You got cheese in the end.  It will be cheese.  Will it age nicely?  That's a *whole other* hour long post on my part :-)  Aging cheese is quite tricky unless you are vacuum packing it.  After 2 weeks, will you end up with blue mold covering your cheese? Probably.  It happened to all of us when we started.  But you have cheese and it will be fine.  Will it be asiago?  Almost certainly not.  But it will be cheese.

Every video Ive seen has showed the curd coagulated on top and then cut. My curd was on the bottom. It only had 15 min to coagulate before I realized my mistake but when I grabbed a handful of pea-sized whey, it seemed solid and fell apart when I dropped it back into the pot.

The curds don't float on top.  The curd forms in one big block.  The whey doesn't drain until you cut the curd (unless you are doing something special, or you are doing it incorrectly).  They whole milk gels.  If the videos are not working like that, then you are looking at the wrong videos.  I have to be honest.  90% of cheese resources on the internet are absolutely terrible. I mean, they are just flat out wrong.  But the thing about cheese is that you can do everything absolutely wrong and still get cheese!  So, in many ways, you just don't have to worry about it if your goal is cheese.  If your goal is a good quality cheese of a specific style, then you have to learn a *lot* and pay attention *a lot* and practice *a lot*.  This is just one cheese.  It's fine.  Once you've done 20 of them, then you'll start to get comfortable about making cheese and can start improving quite quickly.  Don't worry about your first cheese.

So, again, there is something seriously wrong here -- and not just that you added the rennet before you added anything else.  I assume you meant "handful of pea-sized curds".  That just shouldn't happen. That almost certainly means your milk was much too acidic... I guess???  Again, it's really hard to guess what's wrong here except that it's a lot of stuff.

So...  This is just a really hard post to respond to because something went very wrong and it's mainly just that you need to get some more experience making cheese -- and probably need better references than you have now.  But the exciting thing is that you have cheese!  So don't worry about it.

If you need help finding better references for learning how to make cheese, feel free to reach out.  My personal suggestion is to buy Gianaclis Caldwell's "Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking".  It's literally the only book I recommend.  Most other books have pretty bad problems.  In terms of videos, Gavin Weber's videos give a good overall idea of how to do things.  I have problems with some of the things he does, but you'll consistently get cheese if you follow his videos.  If you are looking for specific recipes, I highly recommend looking in the appropriate section of this forum and even asking for some recommendations.  Jim Wallace's recipes on cheesemaking.com are quite good, but often have large errors in them, so you have to be a little careful.  There are a couple of other niche places to get recipes online, but the vast majority of recipes on the internet are just plain wrong, so you have to tread carefully.

I hope that helps!

[Possum-Pie]

Thank you SO much for trying to help. The rennet is vegetable rennet instructions say "half tablet will set 2 gal. milk in 45 min. I added a half tab. I don't have a pH meter so I can't test the milk but it is store-bought 2% pasteurized and homogenized cow's milk. I doubt the pH is drastically out of whack.
Culture is "CHEESE CULTURE, THERMOPHILIC TYPE B - FOR ITALIAN STYLE CHEESES"
I used Gavin Webber's recipe on YouTube, he seems to be very knowledgeable. Here is a screenshot of the recipe



When I say the whey is on top, I mean that I put the rennet in, give a quick stir, Stop the milk from continuing to swirl by putting my spoon in, and walk away for 45 min. Upon return, I have several inches of whey and can't see the curds. They have fallen to the bottom of the pot. This is not normal from what I have seen. I tried making something simpler last night-Mozzarella. Following Gavin's directions, the same thing happened. whey on top. What a disaster, curds never melted after heat was applied. I ended up throwing away a bowl of whey the size of a grain of rice to maybe a grape, all hard as a rock and inedible. Never stayed together when I squeezed it, the pellets just fell back apart.

[Possum-Pie]

UPDATE: I may have figured it out...Amazon description says "1 Tablet will coagulate 4 gallons of milk" but the back of the foil pack the tabs came in says "1 tablet treats 50 liters of milk!!! Somebody screwed up somewhere. The instructions on the pack are in Spanish, and when I translated it it isn't even Veg. rennet it is "Rennet de vaquita"--calf-rennet. Luckily I know enough Spanish to read it, the poor folks who buy it and go by the Amazon instructions are screwed.

[mikekchar]

Awesome!  Yeah, 1 tablet for 50 liters is the amount for one of the more common brands you can buy.  It's kind of inconvenient because if you want to do a smaller amount, you need to scale it.  The most common way of doing it is to break up 1/4 of a tablet in 100 ml of non-clorinated water and then use a percentage of that in your cheese.  So, for example 1/4 of a tablet is enough for about 12 liters, so if you want to do 4 liters, you would used 33 ml of your rennet water.  Unfortunately, you can't store that rennet water for any reasonable period, so you'll have to discard it.  It makes tablet rennet more expensive, but it's easier to store because you can store it in the freezer.

Good luck on your next cheese!  Just a quick pointer: mozzarella is not a simple cheese.  Especially the "quick" mozzarella where you add acid it very prone to failure, so I don't recommend doing it until you have considerable experience and understand all of the processes involved.

[MacGruff]

A couple of other items:

I also had a devil of a time getting my cheeses to work properly. I was going through the same process as you (although I am using liquid Rennet, so did not run into your problem, thankfully!). However, I noticed you used store-bought homogenized milk. The homogenization process will make it very difficult to make a good cheese. Look around for a supplier who does not homogenize their milk and you will be more successful.

As far as Mozzarella - the best recipe I've found is on the www.seriouseats.com website. I've been very successful with it.

Good luck.

[Possum-Pie]

Thanks for the tip Macgruff. I've seen so many people who say as long as the store milk isn't "ultra-pasteurized" that it is ok. I have a farm-store right down the road but wanted to try the store milk ($4/gal) before the raw milk ($8.80/gal). 

As for the rennet...I Googled "+QSO rennet" and got a zillion hits, everybody online sells it, and EVERYONE says that it is vegetable rennet 1tab/4gal milk. That is absolutely NOT what the Spanish label on the package says, so is everyone wrong and the package correct? I can't believe some Spanish-speaking vegan didn't read the "Calf rennet" on the label and freak out and call the company. I see about as many bad reviews from this product as good reviews, so who knows. I may return it to Amazon and try liquid animal rennet.

[MacGruff]

Raw is not the same. My milk source is pasteurized, so it's not raw.

Sometimes they refer to it as "cream-line" because after a day the cream tends to separate a bit and move to the top of the container. It's not a problem for me, as a simple shake or stir recombines everything.

[Possum-Pie]

So is there a compromise? $4 store milk vs $8 raw? I don't mind spending the extra money if I get quality cheese, but being new, $24 of milk ruined by a bad mistake or bad ingredients would probably stop me from continuing this new hobby...

[Aris]

Raw milk cheese has more risk. It can make you sick or worse if the raw milk somehow got contaminated or something went wrong during the make. I buy raw milk from multiple farmers and I use raw milk from only one farmer and either thermize or pasteurize milk from other farmers. The raw milk from one farmer doesn't puff like bread dough when turned into cheese and I can make my own starter culture from the raw milk called clabber. I already made multiple cheeses using that raw milk and they were excellent. Raw milk does make a significant difference in cheesemaking imho and raw milk cheese that use natural starter like clabber is even better. Parmigiano Reggiano which is one of the best cheeses ever made use only grass fed raw milk and natural starter called natural whey starter. The raw milk that I pasteurize or thermize are still good. It sets just like raw milk and the curds are firm even without calcium chloride. What I don't like is sometimes they have that pronounced cooked milk flavor.

[MacGruff]

The compromise the pasteurized but non-homogenized milk. In my area (Pittsburgh, PA), I am being charge $5.50 per gallon. I do not use raw milk, although I know where I can buy it, because I do not know that I want to take the chance. I know it is mostly safe, but I am not willing to take the small chance of something going wrong. Because of that stance, I do not know how much they charge for raw milk around here.

[Possum-Pie]

I look at it like wine tasting. I know "wine snobs" who buy $100/bottle wines because of the "nuanced flavor."  I personally have tried expensive and I've tried bargain wines. The slight or no difference to my untrained palette isn't worth the added price.
I've eaten Parmigiano Reggiano at an average of $15-20/lb and while it has a better flavor than generic "sawdust parm" from the store, a good quality American Parm. is fine for my pizzas, spaghetti, etc. It's a matter of balance. I'd love to try making Pecorino Romano but at $40/gallon for sheep milk, I'll pass on that one. Perhaps if I stick with the hobby and feel confident in my abilities, I'll attempt a wheel of Sheep's cheese.

UPDATE: I couldn't wait the full 3 weeks for my Asiago to age, I was afraid it was going to be a fail. I cut it Sunday after 2 weeks of aging and it was good. No mechanical holes inside, no mold anywhere (I was religious about brine-brushing it every day. It was very dense and when shredded had a flavor part way between provolone and Asagio. I had put ground pepper in it and smoked the wheel for an hour in my cold smoker, so the flavor was enhanced by that. I gave a wedge to family members who all said it was worth shredding for salads, pasta, etc. The texture in eating a slice was a bit inconsistent, owing I believe to the strange reaction my milk had to the rennet. I am going to try again today for a different cheese, I bought 3 gallons of milk down in Maryland this weekend (Pennsylvania has a state min. price of $4.50/gal while Maryland has no minimum.) I got it for $2.49/gallon so what a difference in price!

Here are pics of my first cheese Asagio with black pepper and smoked (I shredded some and gave a lot away)

[DrChile]

My advice: stick with it!

Experiment with different milks on small 2 gallon makes until you find a milk that works for you.
For my most of my cheese makes - I use either Snowville or indian Creek creamery milk (low temp past and non-homogenized).  At 8$ a gallon, it isn't cheap, but I'm willing to spend that to avoid the frustration of crappy milk. 
I've tried Kroger milk and learned that I can't work with that.  It just doesn't coagulate that well and form a good curd mass.  Since I bought into a goat herd share, I've been supplementing the cream line milk with raw goat milk from my herd share (i'll pastuerize the goat milk if i'm doing chèvre or other soft cheeses - for longer aged cheeses i just use raw. The goat milk isn't cheap either (12$ a gallon) but i'm supporting my local farmer and the milk is really good. 
For my parmesan like makes, I use Costco milk (3$ a gallon) because I'm making an 8 gallon batch at a time and can't bring myself to drop 64$.
I'm sure there are cream line milks available to you in Gettysburg - start small and test them out.
We've all had horrible tales of cheese not going the way we want, while disappointing, it's just cheese and we learn and move on.

nice looking cheese pics!

Trent

[Aris]

I look at it like wine tasting. I know "wine snobs" who buy $100/bottle wines because of the "nuanced flavor."  I personally have tried expensive and I've tried bargain wines. The slight or no difference to my untrained palette isn't worth the added price.
I've eaten Parmigiano Reggiano at an average of $15-20/lb and while it has a better flavor than generic "sawdust parm" from the store, a good quality American Parm. is fine for my pizzas, spaghetti, etc. It's a matter of balance. I'd love to try making Pecorino Romano but at $40/gallon for sheep milk, I'll pass on that one. Perhaps if I stick with the hobby and feel confident in my abilities, I'll attempt a wheel of Sheep's cheese.

I find wine boring. I've tried 2-4 usd wine and I find them comparable to 15-20 usd wine. I really like single malt whiskies though. They are far more exciting because of how they are made and has flavors that wine can never match. You can even buy single malts aged in red wine cask or sherry cask which are awesome. I prefer them to be in the 40-100 usd range. Although I have several whiskies costing 250-300 usd, they are not really any better and the price just got jacked up so high because they are rare. I am willing to pay that kind of money because I notice the "nuanced flavor" and I get a lot of satisfaction drinking them. Overpriced no age statement whisky like Macallan are a waste of money though. A well aged Parmigiano Reggiano shines when eaten on its own. There is nothing wrong with using good quality imitation Parmesan on pizza and spaghetti. Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are pretty cheap here so I use them when cooking and topping pasta and pizza while a Californian Parmesan here that is only slightly cheaper, is garbage.