Bitter taste

[pely]

Hi everyone, I have been lurking and reading everyone's post for a while this is really a great community! I work at a small dairy and we are venturing into the world of fresh cheeses. We have been making a acid coagulated soft cheese that we then form into logs and have been very happy with the results. We recently acquired a vacuum packager to try and extend the life of the cheese which seems to be working but the cheese is unfortunately becoming very bitter by 3+ weeks. I am guessing that the bitter taste may be due to continued acidification (I am on my way over to the farm to test some of the cheese now). Can anyone suggest a way to prevent this bitter taste from developing over time?  I am wondering if we are not salting enough? We have been mixing the salt into the curd after the drainage and then rolling it into logs.
Thanks in advance for all your help
Cheers
Pat

[linuxboy]

Most likely rennet, or possibly milk quality, or contamination. I have kept lactic logs for 6 weeks at 65F with no problem before (except all the crazy mold growth), so it's likely your process or ingredients. What is the MFFB of the logs?

[pely]

Thanks for the quick response. What is MFFB I am not familiar with the lingo sorry.

[dttorun]

That would be Moisture Fat Free Basis.
You need to find what have you changed in your process. Everything being equal, is it draining time, ripening temperature etc. Perhaps you are packing too early.

Tan

[pely]

Thanks for the clarification. I am working on calculating the MFFB, we have never done that before. To calculate the moisture content I assume you can just calculate the difference in wet weight verses dry weight and then convert to percent? But how do you calculate the percent fat of the cheese? I know what the percent fat of the milk is we have those numbers run for us but do not get the percent fat of the cheese tested.

[dttorun]

MFFB is the percentage moisture on a fat-free basis:
Weight of moisture in the cheese/Total weight of cheese - weight of fat in the cheese x 100

FDB is percentage fat on the dry basis: Fat content of the cheese/Total weight of cheese - weight of moisture in the cheese x 100

Tan

[linuxboy]

Might be too tough. OK, how about this one: what is the volume of whey you drain from all the curds relative to the volume of milk? Do you drain until you've drained 30%, 40%, 50% something else?

In France, that's often how cheesemakers will know when to stop - by the volume of whey drained from the lactic/semi-lactic logs or disks.

What rennet are you using? And what's your feed and mineral schedule? I've experienced off-flavors before when nutrition was off.