Hello from São Paulo, Brazil

[cheese.maia]

Hey Y'all,

I'm Jake, from the BGKY/Nashville, TN (USA) area originally but living in Brazil for the past several years. 

I had never even thought of making cheese until I moved down here and saw my buddies grandma making some traditional family cheeses.  I'm hoping to get ahold of some of these recipes someday to bring back to the US to make them myself, but what good is a recipe if I don't have the skill to make it tasty?

so I've begun making my own cheese since the pandemic started, which has proved difficult in a small apartment, but has not deterred me to continue learning! Hoping to keep up the journey and bring something back to show to the fam,

If anyone has any tips/info/general commentary on Brazilian cheese, I would love to hear.

So far I have really only experimented with what is called here "Queijo Coalho", I don't know what its referred to as in english, but the direct translation is just "Rennet Cheese", from what I understand its similar to the cheese houllami (if I am not mistaken) in that it retains its shape well and doesn't completely melt at high temps so it is often grilled. 

The problem that I have run into here in the middle of the city is that all of the milk that I can find around me is UHT.  When cutting the curd, it dissolves into very small pieces and doesn't bunch together into the larger curds that I expect to see when draining the soro from the massa (Sorry, Im not sure what exact terminology to use yet, I think these are Portuguese for whey and curd?).  Final results have generally ended up with a dryer texture and a lack of the curds maintaining their shape and sticking together even after being in the press for a while. 

Anyways, have a good one!

Jake

[MacGruff]

Welcome to the forum!

Whey, curds -- yep, you got the right terminology.

UHT milk is not good for cheese making. The ultra high temperatures used in the process probably cause the results you are seeing. In all the recipes I have seen, there is always a warning NOT to use UHT milk. Sao Paulo is so large, look around and ask around, there must be some other milk sources around.