New member from Holland

[DutchCheeseMaker]

Hello all,

I am a new member to this forum and hereby would like to introduce myself.

I am from the Netherlands and I work as an Industrial Engineer for FrieslandCampina, the #3 dairy company of the world and the #1 cooperative dairy company of the world.

I don't work for the cheese-division of our company, but at he consumer products division, for the plants in Belgium and The Netherlands. This mainly concerns milk, buttermilk, yogurt, drinking yogurt en flavoured milk drinks (i.e. chocolate milk).

I graduated as mechanical engineer 2 years ago after which I started my new job in the dairy world. As an addition to my engineering skills, the company send me on a course on basic dairy technology. There I learned about the magical world of dairy. Part of this course was a practical workshop on cheesemaking.

This is where my I first became intrested in cheesemaking. I bought a starters kit and started experimenting.
So far I have made:
- 1x Gouda cheese -> failure
- 1x fresh cheese (boursin-like) -> great results
- 1x Gouda cheese -> satisfactory, lil bit salty, but still good enough to eat.

I am planning on making much more cheese (for a hobby) and hope to learn from this forum and share my experience.

Greetings from the Netherlands,
DutchCheeseMaker

[MarkShelton]

Welcome to the forum! That's quite an impressive resume! Hopefully we can all help you out with getting some better results with your cheese.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Welcome to the forum "Dutch". Why do you say your first Gouda failed? What happened?

[DutchCheeseMaker]

I think it was a combination of multiple factors.

First of all, I used store bought pasteurized milk. This milk is lower on protein (has been bactofugated) and there are less free Calcium ions present due to the heating. I did not (yet) have access to CalciumChloride solution to counteract this.

As a result, the renneting did not work out as it should have. The gel that formed was not as firm as it should have been.
As a result, I kind of "panicked" and did not stay close to the (timing) instructions for the washing and stirring of the curds.
The final curds where still really wet and moist when I put them in the cheese form. During pressing, the cheese height was reduced to almost half and lots of whey came out. The final result was a very flat, dish-like cheese, which was nothing close to Gouda.

The second time I used Ca-Cl and everything went alot smoother. The process was better controller (no panic!) and the result of the different steps looked a lot more like I learned in the workshop.

Next time I am hoping to find me some raw milk somewhere.....

[Cheese Head]

Goedenavond, welkom aan boord!

Ik spreek geen Nederlands but I work for a large Dutch company and have many Dutch friends, none make cheese.

Some pictures here and here of Dutch cheese shops last time I was there .

Good to hear you are working the wrinkles out in your cheesemaking, may also be the amount if rennet or how you applied it.

Have fun!