Coagulated, Rennet, Cow - No Curd Formation, Insufficient Rennet

[Cheese Head]

zenith1, good point.

Matt (and others), I wrote up a guide on this and other methods, just choose the "Curd - When to Cut" webpage. I still need to add some better pictures.

[Alex]

Matt- glad to hear that you narrowed the problem down to an insufficient quantity of rennet. At least that is easily fixed. The two hours to establish a clean break still seem excessive. Have you tried to using the spinning bowl method to determine the time of flocculation? I think that in my experience it works better than trying to determine a clean break.

I like the "flocculation time" method. I wish I could use it for every cheese. Is there data in any form about this for different types of cheese?

[Cheese Head]

Alex, only the numbers in webpage linked above. I heard that Peter Dixon's recipes also have some numbers.

[Sailor Con Queso]

There are several guidelines in American Farmstead Cheese, but doesn't list every cheese. There are enough to make intelligent choices for categories of cheese. To me the most important thing is consistency - getting the same relative coagulation every time.