Hello from Lyon / France

[nonet]

Dear cheese lovers.

I am a new member of the forum and very excited to be so !
I live in Lyon, France, but I was raised in Tours, very close to the areas of production of the amazing goat cheeses of Sainte Maure, Valencay, Selles-sur-Cher... My mother would by them at the market every week, so I grew up eating them at almost every meal

As a result, I started to try to make my own cheese about two years ago (I am ~40 now), I've made about 25 cheeses so far, I think.

To share my very modest experience on that matter, I started with simple recipes online first (French websites essentially), and then bought the (seems-to-be-controversial) Asher's book to start understanding a bit deeper the recipes and processes.
I was very happy with the kefir idea, could find gems easily, and really succeeded in making creamy-smelly amazing goat cheeses, limburger, feta and hard-cooked styles, even mozzarella.

Everything worked great (although I wasn't controlling anything, really, except time and temperature ), until the dream ended suddenly and everything went wrong at some point : all new cheeses were failures, floating spongy curds, acetic and solvent-like smells after a few days I tried and retried and re-re-re-retried unsuccessfully, I never really understood what happened.
So I threw away my gems and bought new ones several month later : same problem at the very first batch.
Even a year after, I bought yet another pack of gems, from yet another person, same thing.

OK, my kitchen looks like a lab, I bake bread and croissants often, brew beer, make kefir and japanese tsukemono, so yes there is a rich bacterial and yeast environment at home I think
But I am not sure that explains the sudden and continuous failures with kefir.
Actually, in parallel, I also tried to make cheese with whey only, and that way I NEVER had any failure. I can't say my cheese are like the genuine ones that I try to reproduce, but at least they are good

So I got despaired and started to consider seriously the use of industrial cultures (it seems like they're called "DVI") and that's why I am here : now is time to learn more and start to be serious

And I am so happy that you guys seem to have a tremendous experience in bacteria and yeasts.
I am sure I will come back with many questions, and hopefully help others if I can.

Yep, that's my introduction, thanks for reading ! And looking forward to exchange ideas.