Crumbly Cheddar Cheese Issues

[Caballo Cheese]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice because I've now made more than 35 cheddars over the past few years and while they are generally edible and taste quite good (most of the time), I cannot seem to produce a cheddar with the moist, flexible and sliceable texture I am hoping for (big thankyou to modern supermarket cheeses for altering my perception of what a "cheddar" should be  ). Every cheese ends up significantly crumblier than I think it should be. My working hypothesis is excessive acidification, but without pH measurements I'm really guessing.

I want to preface this post by openly stating I am a complete novice. Although I have been making cheese for ~3 years, it's a hobby that I only have time for once a month (and with a wait time of 3 months between experiments, it's a long time until I find out if my experiment has made a measurable impact). I have no background in cheesemaking (or any kind of fermentation), having only learnt from what I have read and watched.

I also want to note that I make a Parmesan cheese with the same equipment and 2% milk and I am very happy with the results. Due to my success here, I think the issue has less to do with cleanliness/equipment and more to do with technique?

I realise supermarket cheddar isn't necessarily representative of traditional cheddar. I'm not trying to copy processed supermarket cheese exactly—I'm simply aiming for a moist, flexible, sliceable cheese with a reasonably sharp flavour.

With this in mind, I have tried to make the following as detailed as possible (maybe over-detailed?). I've reached the point where I feel like I've tried a lot of different variables without really solving the problem, so I'm hoping someone with more experience might spot something that I'm missing. I'm keenly interested in the science, so any technical detail is welcome.

My Make Process™:
•    15L store-bought, full cream homogenised/pasteurised milk (I've also tried farm-fresh pasteurised/homogenised milk, but got the same crumbly result)
•    4 mL calcium chloride
•    4 mL 140 IMCU animal rennet
•    3/4 tsp Cheeselinks (Melbourne, AUS) "A Starter" culture (I believe this may be a rebadged Chr. Hansen culture, but I'm not certain). This culture is a mesophilic culture that Cheeselinks specifically state is for Cheddar cheeses. Cheeselinks advise a dosage rate of "one needletip amount per litre of milk" – very helpful. When I contacted them, a person in sales told me 3/4 tsp would do 15 litres. I have tried lowering the dosage to 1/2 tsp, but with no noticeable effect.

For reference, my cheese culture is about 6 months to 1 year old. I keep it in the supplied screw lid container (seems pretty air tight) and store it in the fridge. The culture is not lumpy (moisture affected) and doesn't look or smell odd (I think).

I ripen for around 15 minutes at 30°C (I originally ripened for 40 minutes but through experimentation I found that a reduced ripening time led to a less crumbly cheese). All heating is done via direct heating on a gas stovetop in a really heavy bottomed pot.

The milk usually reaches a clean break in around 40-60 minutes. I have experimented with flocculation timing but this didn't produce a noticeably different result. I have also tried extending the setting time by as much as two hours before cutting, but this also failed to noticeably improve the final cheese.

One thing I have consistently noticed is that although I get a clean break, the curd seems relatively soft and fragile compared with the curd I get when making Parmesan. I have read that cheddar curds are supposedly more fragile, but being a novice, I don't really know any different to the failures I have had. I find that as soon as I start stirring, the curds get small really quickly.

I cut to approximately 1 cm cubes – first cutting the vertical, then using a ~45-degree angle on the knife to cut horizontally. I further cut any large pieces during cooking. I have tried cutting the curds into cubes as large as 3cm, but again, this has no real effect on reducing crumbliness. This is probably the most subjective part of my process – I don't get out a ruler  . By nature, I am a pretty regimented person, so if my recipe says 30°C, you can trust that is the temperature it is going to be.

Cooking:
•    Raise from 30°C to 39°C over approximately 45 minutes while gently stirring – I have found the curds are less fragile if I don't stir during the first 15 minutes of cooking. I have also noticed that stirring in the early phase of cooking causes the curds to break up a lot – I have read about shattered curds, but am not sure if this is happening to me because judging this seems a bit subjective? I'll try an d get a photo when I next make this cheese.
•    Hold at 39°C with continued stirring for another 40 minutes.
After the cooking, I do the squeeze test with a hand full of curds, They always seems to stick together and fall apart when prodded with a thumb, so I think they pass the test. After cooking I drain the curds through cheesecloth in a colander for roughly one minute then begin cheddaring.

Cheddaring:
I use a flip-only cheddaring process (no stacking). The curd is turned approximately every 10 minutes and has a total cheddaring time of around 45 minutes. The slabs become shinier and do knit together, although I wouldn't describe them as forming a particularly firm slab. You can see distinct curd pieces in the slab at the end of cheddaring, although some force is required to mill them.

After milling, the curds are roughly 5 mm pieces and are fairly crumbly. I mill them by squishing the slabs in my fist until they fall apart. I salt immediately after milling using 50 g of salt for around 2.7 kg of wet curd (I could be wrong on the wet curd weight – it's been a long time since I weighed the curds when wet).

I have tasted the whey and curds at various times throughout the ripening, cooking and cheddaring processes and it always seems to be sweet/neutral. I don't detect any acidity.
Pressing:
I use a homemade spring press:
•    5 kg for 15 minutes
•    10 kg for 45 minutes
•    20 kg for approximately 20 hours – this changes based on when I go to bed/wake up. No matter what, it gets a solid 15 hours.

After pressing the cheese is generally well-closed with only occasional small cracks. On the cheeses that I open, I rarely find mechanical flaws – maybe a few here and there, but mostly a consistent press.

Aging:
I age at approximately 12°C in a cake display fridge. The cheese is inside a humidity box about 1.5-2 times the size of the cheese – a recommendation I read on this forum. I have also done a bit of experimenting in my natural rind process and have settled on the "leave the mould alone"™ method rather than trying to keep a clean rind. I monitor the cheeses in their boxes and wipe out any condensation – although, I kind of get to the point where is a leave the box open to a certain extent, I estimate my humidity to be about 85-90%. I only apply olive oil after one month of aging. After that, I generally apply weekly, but this depends on how much the cheese absorbs.

I've also tried vacuum sealing (typically after 1-2 weeks) but these cheeses generally become noticeably sharper and more acidic than my natural rind cheeses. Additionally, the crumbliness it as bad if not worse (photo attached of my most recent vacuum sealed cheddar – it has mustard seeds in it. Admittedly, this is the most crumbly cheese I have had to date).
I open/eat the cheeses at around 3 months old. At this point, natural rind cheeses weigh in at ~1.4kg and vacuum sealed weigh around 1.7kg.

Summary of the Problem:
Externally the cheeses appear to age normally (I think). The issue only becomes apparent when I cut them open. The paste is consistently much more crumbly than I'd expect. Rather than having a sliceable, bendy body, it breaks apart into small pieces. The natural rind cheeses actually have a flavour I'm quite happy with – pretty mild, but I guess longer aging would fix that – but the texture is never right. Vacuum-packed cheeses become both sharper and even more crumbly.

Things I've already tried:
•    Flocculation timing instead of fixed cutting times.
•    Waiting up to two hours after adding rennet before cutting.
•    Reducing the ripening time from 40 minutes to 15 minutes (this reduced the crumbliness somewhat).
•    Reducing the amount of starter culture (without much noticeable improvement).
•    Store-bought pasteurised/homogenised milk and farm-fresh pasteurised/homogenised milk.
•    Natural rind and vacuum-packed aging.

One limitation is that I don't currently own a pH meter (they are pretty cost prohibitive), so I'm making all of my decisions by time and observation rather than pH. I appreciate that this may be a significant limitation, but other cheesemakers seem to do just fine without a pH meter.

I'm not chasing an ultra-traditional farmhouse cheddar. I'm trying to produce something closer in texture to a commercial block cheddar or Swiss-style cheeses – sliceable and slightly flexible rather than crumbly. So, I am open to suggestions of other cheeses if you think they will be easier to make.

Does anything in my process stand out as a likely cause? Without biasing any responses, I'm thinking the symptoms point to over acidification but will completely defer to more knowledgeable people. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated because I'm clearly repeating the same mistake somewhere, but after 35+ makes I can't see where it is.

[Plantdoc]

Cheddar can be hard to get right using HTST pasteurized milk. Bulk pasteurization appears to reduce milk pH buffering capacity, among other things. So when the lag growth phase of your bacteria decide after 6-7 or however many hours to switch to log (turbo) growth phase, your cheese is probably in the press and you're in bed. So while you sleep, those bacteria keep eating and pH keeps dropping well below the desired 5.2-5.3. I've seen it go all the way down to 4.8-4.9 following my inattention to this crucial detail. That means crumbly cheese every time.

So, How to address: 

1. If sticking with your present milk, try cutting culture dose by 75%.
2. Press cheese at lower temperature
3. Taste your cheese. when it tastes neutral to VERY slightly tangy, and curds are knitted, put cheese in fridge,(in the mold with no weight) THEN go to bed.
4. OR use vat pasteurized, non-homogenized milk and proceed normally. You should see a much more well behaved pH curve with milk like this.

Interestingly, I find that grocery store milk will consistently make decent (not overly acid) thermophilic cheeses without so much runaway acid formation. Others may see it differently, but I believe this group of bacteria are generally not as aggressive at acid formation, as a general rule. 

[Caballo Cheese]

Thanks for taking the time to read through my very long post and for such a thoughtful reply. Your explanation about the delayed acidification makes a lot of sense and could explain several things I've observed. During the cheesemaking process the whey and curds always taste sweet/neutral, so although I suspected over-acidification, I could never identify it prior to pressing. I hadn't really considered that most of the acidification might be happening while the cheese is sitting warm in the press overnight.

The suggestion to dramatically reduce the culture is particularly interesting. I had previously reduced it from 3/4 tsp to 1/2 tsp without noticing much difference, but I haven't tried anything as drastic as a 75% reduction. Do you think this would impact the culture's ability to dominate over undesirable bacteria? Considering I am doing a natural rind, I have always been a bit nervous of infections and have erred on the side of caution. Do you know of any additional precautions I could take?
The idea of refrigerating the cheese once it's knitted, rather than leaving it warm overnight, is an interesting idea, but leaves me with more questions.

When you say "put cheese in the fridge", do you normally put it in the kitchen fridge (2°C) or the cheese fridge (12°C)? Also, when I come back the next morning, would you recommend removing the cheese from the press and leaving it to dry in the cheese fridge or move the cheese out of the fridge and leave to dry at room temperature?

I am also curious about your comment of "pressing at a lower temperature". I have noticed slightly less crumbliness in cheeses made in the winter, so this may add some weight to this idea. What sort of temperature are you aiming for? My house is usually around 20°C overnight, so I'm wondering whether that's still warmer than you'd recommend. I guess a follow-on to this is: at what point would the colder press occur. For example, would I do my initial pressing of 10kg at room temperature, then move the press to the cheese fridge for the 20kg press?

Unfortunately, vat-pasteurised, non-homogenised milk isn't an option for me at this time, so I'd probably try the culture reduction and overnight refrigeration first before changing milk. Since both suggestions are aimed at preventing excessive acidification, I'm inclined to try them together on the next batch. Does that seem reasonable, or would you recommend changing one variable at a time?

Thanks again – I really appreciate the suggestions. I'll report back on what I did/outcomes observed after I make the cheese this weekend.