First Cream Cheese

[Lv9_Engineer]

And so, more than three months later, here's what I got.

With Kazu:

HG of Hood light cream (UP) was used as the base, which produced what appeared to be almost three cups of product, if I remember correctly.

- ~1/8 tsp of Danisco KAZU1
- ~1/8 tsp of Danisco LM57
- Only a tiny drop or two of NEC liquid animal rennet
- ~1/8 tsp of NEC liquid CaCl2

Everything added to room temp cream in stockpot after dilution and covered. Here's some sporadic notes I took during ripening:

T(h)	pH	Temp (F)
0	6.9	69.4
8.66	6.3	69.2
11.66	5.9	68.8
13.75	5.4	69.4(F)
16.75	5.0

The curd was scooped into a cheesecloth sack and hung to drain for something like 12 hours.

This resulted in something more like just sour cream in both consistency and flavor. I'm guess this is because the L. helveticus was never really active at room temperature, so I didn't get any contribution from that, and I don't think there are any other aroma-producing cultures present.

Two attached pictures are of this product at the end of ripening and at the end of draining. It looked promising at first, but ended up being softer than I thought it would be after I mixed it. I added some salt and threw it in the fridge. I enjoyed using this stuff to make stroganov and various sauces, as well as putting it in tacos, but it wasn't what I was going for, which I expected thanks to Sailor's advice.


With Flora Danica:

This time I used 1 quart of Meijer 36% cream (UP).

The additives are the same as above, except with FD instead of Kazu obviously. Dosages are all halved since I only had a quart of base.

Procedure was the same. More sporadic notes:

T(h)	pH	Temp (F)
0	7.2	83.0
1	7.1	80.0
11.5	5.7	72.3
17.5	5.2	66.3
19.75	4.9	66.9
23	4.3
36.25

I didn't have any data at 36h, that's just when the curd was hung. It took a longer time to form well enough to drain this time. I actually started scooping the curd around 18h to hang it, but it fell right through the cloth, so I waiting longer. It might have been because of somewhat low ripening temperature, though the pH was already lower than on the first attempt. After another day, I made sure to fold the cloth just to be sure, and no curd leaked through this time.

Two pictures are of before and after stirring the drained curd. I loved how creamy it turned out. Added some salt to bring out the flavor, and was happy that it actually tasted mildly cheesy unlike the first attempt. After refrigerating, it firmed up very nicely and is just generally very cream-cheese-like.

Just wanted to share my results.

[Kern]

Thanks for the cheese porn and story of your cheese.  It is worth getting your first cheese from me.   

[Lv9_Engineer]

Thanks for the cheese porn and story of your cheese.  It is worth getting your first cheese from me.   

You honor me so! I've now been initiated.