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!