Tomme attempt #3 - An improvement

[MacGruff]

This is my third attempt at making a Tomme, and while it is better than my first two, it still has room for improvements.

First of all, I changed my recipe source, and instead of Caldwell's recipe, I followed Pav's that Boofer was kind enough to point me to. Here are my make notes:

Started with 3 Gallons of Costco Milk. Calibrated my pH meter using distilled water (Note: afterwards found out from the forum that this is not a good practice, so the actual numbers are probably wrong. However, the trends should still be valid. Since this, I went out and bought the right kind of calibration fluids...)

1240   Got milk to a temp of 88 degrees and pH at 6.04. Added 3/8 teaspoon of Flora Danica and ¾ teaspoon of Calcium Chloride
1340   Milk at 86 degrees. pH at 6.07. added ¾ teaspoon Rennet that was dissolved in ¼ cup distilled water
1400   flocculation achieved; Multiplier of 3X (20 minutes, meaning one hour. This seems very long to me)
1500   Milk at 78 degrees. pH of 6.00. Clean break and cut the cheese.
1600   Milk at 100 degrees. pH at 5.90. This is after cutting, letting it rest, and warming it up. Then letting it rest again so that it matted. Transferred it to the mold. At this point, I weighed it. The mass was 6 lb. 12 Oz.
1630   Flipped the cheese over in the mold
1700   pH at 5.80. Flipped cheese second time. Weight is down to 4 lb. 6 Oz.
2100   pH at 5.12. Flipped it once more. Weight is 4 Lb. 3 Oz.

Put the cheese in brine

0900 (Next Morning)   pH 5.26. Took cheese out of mold and put it on a plate to dry out. Weight is 4 Lbs. even.

Next day it went in to the cave. At the time, it weight 3 Lb. 8 Oz. The pH was showing 4.94. From here on out, the columns will be day number, Temp of cave, % Humidity, pH. But first, a picture of the cheese right after it came out of the brine:

[Pic #1 below]

Day in cave   Temp   Rel Humidity   pH
1   50   84   4.7
2   49   87   4.82
3   48   89   5.00
4   49   89   5.07
5   49   99   5.74
6   47   99   5.44
7   48   99   6.10
8   47   98   5.97
9   50   97   5.88
10   49   94   5.78
11   49   93   5.99
12   50   89   5.99
13   48   87   5.99
14   48   87   6.30
15   48   88   6.46
16   49   89   6.35

Up until now, I flipped the cheese every day. By now, a nice rind had formed, so I stopped the daily flipping and moved to a regimen of flipping it once a week. I kept monitoring humidity levels and pH levels and they did not change materially from what you see in the chart above.
40 days after the end of this chart, I was ready to taste the cheese. Here are two pictures of the end product:

[Pic #2 below]


As you can see, the weight dropped to 2 lb, 13 Oz. (which meant that it lost 11 Oz during the aging process).

After cutting it, it looked like this:

[Pic #3 below]



The texture was a bit crumbly, the flavor was on the tangy side. It reminded me a bit of an aged chevre more than anything else. Quite pleasant, but not what I was looking for. I did try to melt it on a slice of bread, and it melted well.

I am pleased with what I got. I am definitely eating this one. However, there is also much room for improvement. Any suggestion are welcome, and I have some ideas including making it smaller (a two gallon make and a change in the culture mix, for instance).

[Bantams]

It looks quite acidic. Next time keep your pot of milk in a sink full of same temp water to keep the temp consistent. During renneting your temp needs to stay at 88-90 (whatever your target is) - you don't want it to drop more than 0.5 degree.  The cool temperature definitely contributed to your long flocculation time
Also, that seems like a lot of culture. What does the recipe call for? I use about 1 1/4 tsp culture for 25-30 gallons.

[MacGruff]

Thanks for the comments. The milk is probably not as acidic as the reading imply. Note that I "calibrated" my pH meter in distilled water. I've been told that's not a good practice and probably means that my reading are showing lower numbers than reality.

Good point about the temp drop. I'll have to pay attention to that on my next make. Thanks!

[Bantams]

I disregarded your pH numbers because I assumed they were all incorrect. But the texture of your cheese (crumbly) shows that it was quite acidic, likely due to the long renneting time and the large culture dose.
Now that you have calibration fluids for your meter you should be good to go!

[MacGruff]

Ah. I see what you are saying. Thanks. Will cut back on the cultures as well. Thanks!!

[rsterne]

I looked at your timeline, and it would appear that you left 1 hr. between flocculation occurring and cutting the curd.... Should that not be from the time you added the rennet (20 min x 3) from 1340?.... ie curd cut at 1440?.... or are you using a multiplier of 4X?....

Bob

[MacGruff]

The recipe I am using calls for a 3 to 3.5X multiplier, so I was right in that range.

As you saw from Bantams comment, I used too much culture, so my long time was caused by that mistake. My next attempt is in the cave now and I adjusted the quantity of culture down. Flocculation was achieved in 15 minutes. Hopefully it will not be as acidic as this one was ... although it is still eating good!

[Bantams]

Bob is saying that your renneting time clock needs to start from when you add the rennet - not after flocculation is achieved.
So if you added rennet at 3:40, and flocc was 20 x 3, cut time is 4:40.