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Yields

Started by bansidhe, August 22, 2021, 12:14:27 PM

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bansidhe

Hi,

Yesterday I made Cabra Al Vino.  I notice my yield seems rather low only ~2 1/2 pounds out of three gallons of goat milk.

I took the whey and started to cook it down for Gjetost...   I noticed soon after starting a LOT of ricotta.  I have tried numerous times to make ricotta and could never get anything but this time I got 10 oz just form the whey.  No milk added, no acid added.  (It's very delicious this goat milk ricotta, so light and sweet).   I'm thinking I should have. 1) strained through a cheese cloth in stead of just through the basket mold as directed 2) waited longer to cut the curds although the break did seem good.  Any other thoughts on this?

thanks!
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

MacGruff

For my recent Cabra el Vino, I used 2 gallons of raw goat's milk and got 1 lb 7 Oz of cheese.

bansidhe

Hmmmm...  interesting

That is close to what I got , though I got slightly less..  Did you do anything with your whey?
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

Bantams

Goat milk often has a lower protein% and yield than cow milk. And the curds are more delicate so they benefit from gentle handling and sometimes a decrease in cooking temps. 
Also, it seems more easily affected by pasteurization and so it is crucial to add calcium chloride. 

bansidhe

Good to know.  I used raw goat's milk and did add CaCl2. Perhaps the break was not quite clean enough. I remember the last time I made this (Many, Many missteps in that one!) I forgot about the curds and waited over 2 1/2 hours.  I got a much greater yield.  I will make this again.. and perhaps the next time I'll take a nap while the rennet works.  :-)
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

Aris

Quote from: bansidhe on August 22, 2021, 12:14:27 PM
Hi,

Yesterday I made Cabra Al Vino.  I notice my yield seems rather low only ~2 1/2 pounds out of three gallons of goat milk.

I took the whey and started to cook it down for Gjetost...   I noticed soon after starting a LOT of ricotta.  I have tried numerous times to make ricotta and could never get anything but this time I got 10 oz just form the whey.  No milk added, no acid added.  (It's very delicious this goat milk ricotta, so light and sweet).   I'm thinking I should have. 1) strained through a cheese cloth in stead of just through the basket mold as directed 2) waited longer to cut the curds although the break did seem good.  Any other thoughts on this?

thanks!
Is the weight after salting it? That is rather low even after salting it and it is raw which should yield more cheese. I made a washed rind semi firm goat's milk cheese using 7 liters raw milk that I pasteurized and no calcium chloride. My yield was 959 g (almost 14%) after it absorbed 3% salt.

bansidhe

Wow. I'd love to get 14%!  This was before salting.  I know it's low... I have only made two cheese in which I got pretty good yields.  I'm not sure why.  I usually use raw or a mix of raw and pasteurized.  And I always add CaCl2.  I think I stir gently and slowly... I even wait extra time after cutting.   Sigh..
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

Aris

When I make a semi firm cheese, I don't go above 105 f and I also wait for the milk to set for over an hour. How long I stir depends on my mood. Sometimes I stir for over 30 minutes and sometimes only 10 minutes. Despite my randomness I get the desired texture and moisture content that I want. The raw cow's milk that I used has crappy yield, 9-10% for a high moisture blue cheese. I will never buy it again.

bansidhe

Cool....  I always worry about not stirring enough.  If I had only stirred 10 minutes for example, the curds would have been pretty "juicy".

I am going to wait a bit longer for cutting this cheese.  It so weird.. I typically do not get great yield but the second Caerphilly I made and the pepper jack came out with about 11-12 %.  I have no real idea why.
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

mikekchar

Keep in mind that any milk coming from a very small producer might be quite variable wrt fat content.  Large producers will pool all their milk and if they have milk from 1000 cows, you get an average.  Additionally, they will standardise the milk, by skimming it (usually).  But if you are getting milk from Bessy one day and then milk from Gertrude the next, you may have *very* different milk.

I have to say that I disagree (to a certain extent) with Aris.  My dad actually makes cheese in a really relaxed way (possibly similar to Aris) and he makes really good cheese that is delicious.  Everybody enjoys it.  It ticks all the boxes for what my dad wants in a cheese.  It doesn't actually tick the boxes for what *I* want in a cheese, though.  I have never had Aris's cheese, so there may be something they are doing that I'm just not understanding.  But if *I* don't pay strict attention to what I'm doing, my cheese will be delicious, but it will not turn out the way I want.

Drain pH and curd structure are basically what the time in the vat is all about.  It doesn't matter at all how you get there (and usually there are many roads to the same destination).  However, varying those things will make completely different cheeses, in my experience.  For me, that time in the vat is about paying attention to what's happening so that I can make small adjustments to hit my goals.

For me, the first step is to actually have a goal for the drain.  It drives me crazy that recipes don't state this (even mine ;-) ).  When I'm looking at videos of cheese making I first look at two things: the curd consistency at cut and the curd consistency at drain.  I especially wait to see them take some curds out of the vat and squeeze them, or pull apart some curds (and I've yelled at youtube video editors that cut that out of their video  :-[ )  Then I rewind and try to find out the temperature at cut and the temperature at drain (often it's being displayed on the machinery).  This gives you the logic of the make.  It's like the skeleton of the recipe.  From there you add more details, building up the rest of the make.  Then I'll compare that to recipes (and throw out most of them because they aren't even remotely close -- but to be fair, most of them were written before professions, traditional cheesemaking videos were easily available on the internet).

Aris

I am still in an experimental and learning phase. I try to make my own unique cheeses with inspiration from other known cheeses and learn how various steps in cheese making works. I don't like the constraints of random recipes that you find online. I rather learn from videos of people who actually make these well known cheeses. I take notes of everything I do so if I want to recreate a certain cheese that I made before I can. I really want to actually learn how to make cheese and understand the process not follow steps. Because of my approach I learned how to track and target a specific pH range without a meter, how to achieve a certain texture and moisture content in a cheese and how to make it work with very limited resources. So far I am successful at making tasty cheeses with varying textures and flavors with my Macgyver approach.


Aris

Quote from: bansidhe on August 23, 2021, 11:06:53 AM
Cool....  I always worry about not stirring enough.  If I had only stirred 10 minutes for example, the curds would have been pretty "juicy".

I am going to wait a bit longer for cutting this cheese.  It so weird.. I typically do not get great yield but the second Caerphilly I made and the pepper jack came out with about 11-12 %.  I have no real idea why.
Mine too is juicy but I pre drain them in a stainless steel colander because my diy molds are small. I inadvertently made a grana type cheese before with only 5 minutes of stirring and the temperature never exceeded 110 f. It was aged for only 20 days in more or less 80% humidity then vacuum packed for over 3 months. From my observation, aging and humidity plays a big role in removing moisture in the cheese. Even a high moisture blue cheese can be hard as a rock if aged too long or aged at low humidity.

I suspect the raw cow's milk I buy is diluted with water.

bansidhe

I just made a Tilsit, well I hope it's a Tilsit, not so sure now..  Anyway, instead of the stirring for 40-50 at 100 as the recipe stated, I stirred for only 20.  That's because it passed the grip test by then and I was thinking about what you had said.  Since I was worried that the acid was not developed enough, since the whey was quite sweet still I let it sit out overnight at room temp.  This morning it tasted rather neutral so I popped it in the brine. We'll see what kind of cheese I actually wind up with! I'm going to post the make today for input.. :-)

So, sorry for your milk troubles! 
Making cheese is easy, making a cheese is hard

Bantams

Aris, one possibility is that the milk has a high SCC (somatic cell count). High SCC indicates udder inflammation or mastitis.  Subclinical mastitis can result in nearly normal looking milk that still works for cheese, but it will take longer to set up, have weaker curds, and a low yield. 
High SCC is a very common problem, especially for backyard producers who do not do any routine milk tests. 

Aris

Quote from: Bantams on August 24, 2021, 02:07:37 PM
Aris, one possibility is that the milk has a high SCC (somatic cell count). High SCC indicates udder inflammation or mastitis.  Subclinical mastitis can result in nearly normal looking milk that still works for cheese, but it will take longer to set up, have weaker curds, and a low yield. 
High SCC is a very common problem, especially for backyard producers who do not do any routine milk tests.
That might be it. I buy it from a dairy company which usually sells homogenized pasteurized milk. Their raw milk is cheaper and they don't really care about its quality because if you use it raw to make cheese, it becomes rotten. I used to get 12-14% yield using the same milk. I will stick to my other suppliers of milk then. I usually get over 22% yield with water buffalo milk and over 13% with goats milk.