Today I'm using my PH meter for the first time.
Upon advice from Wayne, I bought the Hanna Model: Checker I
I'm basically wanting to make sure my readings are in line with what they should be, at this point in the game.
I started off with 4 gallons of store bought, homo/past. milk (3 gal. 2%, 1 gal. whole & 24 oz. of whipping cream).
Warmed the milk to 90 degrees F and checked the PH.
At this point the reading was 6.70
I then added my Mesophilic A starter culture and CaCl2 and allowed the milk to ripen for one hour. The PH after the hour of ripening time was: 6.63
I did calibrate the meter last night using both 7.01 and 4.01 calibration fluid and had the numbers right on the money.
Thanks for any advice/input anyone can give me.
Dave
that is one hour of Acidification.
The pH will continue to fall as lactose sugars are converted to lactic acid by the starter cultures.
There is a lot of nuance to working with the pH. I would recommend that it not fall below 5.1.
Dry salting at the end of the cheddar process will tend to make life tough for the culture that is making acid. That should stop or significantly slow down the acidification process.
I am not an expert on this, and my own thoughts on this are still being formed, so take this with a grain of salt... ;)
Wayne
First of all, thanks for the input. I had a blast using the PH meter today and can now see where this is a tool that can be very valuable in the process.
My final curd PH was exactly 5.3 which according to the recipe I was using was within the limits (University of Gelph...final PH between 5.3 - 5.4).
My main concern was that I had calibrated the meter correctly but once I googled "milk PH" I was satisfied. From what I found, fresh milk PH should be 6.70 which is exactly what I measured.
The thing that I found fascinating was how quickly PH measurements could change.
I found myself adjusting the recipe by 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there to hit the target PH readings.
Had I simply followed the recipe times I'm sure that my final PH would have turned out differently.
I'm looking forward to trying the meter on several styles of cheese and thanks to Carter, the University of Gelph link he posted has several recipes listed, all giving PH readings and advice on how to control the PH throughout the process.
This is going to be fun!
Dave
That is awesome news.
I will have to check out that site...
What sucks is your new meter goes to .01, my expensive one only goes to .1. I think it's time to buy a new PH meter. I have two already. Dave that is good news I hope, if you haven't already, detailed in short sweet sentences, so it's easier to read, on what you did at what steps to achiever certain results.
As far as milk, milk will always be 6.6-6.9 by the very nature of it. From what I've been told the higher the PH the fresher the milk.
Carter, I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for but hopefully this will fit the bill.
What I will post here is:
1. The PH reading according to the recipe at a given step in the process.
2. MY PH reading at that step and any adjustments I made to the recipe.
My first step was to test the PH of the milk. There was nothing about the PH of fresh milk in the recipe so I guess they just figured that every idiot knew what I did not.
My Fresh milk PH was 6.70
After 1 hour of ripening the recipe said my PH should have dropped by 0.05 points.
My PH reading at this point was 6.63 so I did go a little over.
The recipe did not say what the PH should be after cutting the curd but my reading was: 6.61
The recipe called for letting the curd rest for 15 minutes. Again, it did not give a PH reading after this rest period but my PH was 6.57 at this point.
The recipe now called for a slow cooking of the curd. My temperature up to this point had been 90 degrees and I was to now raise the temperature up to 102 degrees over 30 minutes.
After this initial cooking stage I was to hold the temp at 102 degrees for another 75 minutes or until the PH reached 6.2
On this step it took me closer to 45 minutes to get to 102 degrees and during this step I took several PH readings. Once I did reach 102 degrees my PH was 6.43 I did not note all of the readings I took at this stage, but I did notice that my PH was dropping too quickly.
I then raised the temperature of the curd to 104 degrees to retard the culture a bit. This worked like a charm and the PH drop slowed drastically.
I did have to change the recipe here a bit. I had such a fast drop at first that I hit my target PH of 6.2 at 65 minutes into the cook. At this point I drained the whey through a cheesecloth lined collander and tested the Ph again, this time it was 6.11.
I then went into the cheddaring phase of the recipe.
I did check PH a lot during this stage simply because I didn't want to miss any of my marks. I figured this was one of those steps that was critical to a good make so I didn't want to screw up.
So....
The recipe PH, after the cheddaring step should have been: 5.3 - 5.4. Supposedly it should take 2 hours to reach this Ph level.
Being young and quick (yeah right), I hit a Ph reading of 5.3 in 1 hour and 50 minutes, so I immediately began the milling step.
Unfortunately this was the last PH reading I took on this batch of cheese.
The recipe called for salting in three steps, taking 30 minutes total.
Just as I added the last of my salt, I realized that I hadn't aired up my portable air tank so I had to rush to the garage and get it filled up.
I then had to set up the press and the mold....load the curd and get it all under pressure.
The curd actually felt COLD by this time and I was afraid that there was no way these little 1 - 2 inch squares would ever knit together. Pressing was my main focus at this point, not taking more Ph readings. :-)
I will say one more thing here (and I'll post something else in the cheddar forum)....
The curds did knit together perfectly and the last time I flipped it (at 7:00 this morning) the wheel was looking great.
I'll post a pic under cheddared/milled once it's out of the press.
As you can see, I did have to alter the recipe at a couple of different points, but not by much. The kicker is that I ended the actual make of the cheese (before milling) at 5.3. Wayne recommended not going below 5.1 because this could make the cheese hard and crumbly.
I find it amazing that such a small amout could make such a great differnce so whose to say that an extra 10 minutes here or an extra 5 minutes there might not turn out the cheese you hoped to make.
That's why I've decided that a Ph meter is something that I'm really going to like having in the house.
Hope this is what you were looking for and sorry about getting so long winded (again).
Dave
Excellent Post Dave this should be a sticky. You have done what I have only dreamed, but at least someone is making progress and able to post their technique.
Dave you said you raised it from 102 to 104 to retard the acidification, how long did that take? Are you direct heating?
Carter, thanks...that gave me a good feeling. :-)
As for raising the temp, I did use direct heat on this step.
I normally use a douple boiler but I noticed that my heat was climbing too quickly a little bit earlier and took the curd pot out of the water, once I hit my 102 degree target.
Well this turned out to be advantageous since once I needed to raise the temp to 104, it only took about a minute or two to do so.
According to the Guelph website the critical time of not raising the temp to quickly is in the early part of the cooking stage.
It did not appear to do any damage to the curd and as I said, it did slow things down considerably. What was really amazing was that once the curd began to cool back down into the 102 degree range the Ph drop picked up speed again.
If nothing else, these little meters let you know exactly what's going on at all times. I feel like I learned a ton about how the cheese changes with just this first recipe.
Thanks for your post and the compliment.
Dave
That was a fantastic post Dave. I gave you a cheese.
This is the type of data that everyone can leverage.
Good call Wayne, I gave Dave a cheese too. I just noticed did I used to have 6 cheeses I don't remember, I wonder if someone took one away. :-\
Thanks guys.
Carter....
Perhaps the Beeman took your cheese (said in an Australian accent).
Dave
LOL Dam Him Dam Him All To Hell!
Would someone redirect me to Wayne's recommendation of or a link to the "Hanna model" ph meter? Thanks.
A ph meter is on my list of equip. to buy for this season's cheese. :)
Ham, am I even supposed to say that as I'm Jewish? Anwyay his model is the Hanna Checker Model 98103. BUT please see my PH post I just created or will create in a minute, it has valuable information.
Dave that was a great post! I don't think you can get windy when your talking about the types of details you were talking about. I have yet to check a pH on a cheese and I find most recipes are very limited in this area.
You guys are a bad bad influnece on me I just know this is going to get expensive! :D
I echo your sentiments Debi. I too have been searching for a good ph meter after reading success like this.
Debi and Worlock....
Thanks for the response.
Two sites you might google are:
The university of Gelph website and Peter Dixon's site. Both provide a recipe section with valuable Ph information.
I'm not sure if it was in this post or some other but at one point my wife asked me what I was going to do if I did not hit the Ph marks, according to the recipe.
My response was that a Ph meter is not a tool to tell you that you have screwed up, it is there to KEEP you from screwing up.
This was pretty much my moment of epiphany with my newly purchased meter. After that I began adjusting the recipe so that I would hit the marks at the proper time.
It will still be a few months before I know for certain that this process worked out, but the cheese did come out looking really promising.
Again, thanks for the posts and good luck in your own cheese making.
Dave
Dave I have a page with permission of course from Dr. Hill on my website about cheese familes - a very nice fellow! http://www.deejayssmokepit.net/cheesefamily.htm (http://www.deejayssmokepit.net/cheesefamily.htm)
Dr, Hills Cheese page:
http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/cheese2.html (http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/cheese2.html)
Peter Dixon was the source for most of my recipes his asiago recipe is reallly good. I use it as a grating cheese for soups and pizza and stuff. I'd love to take one of his classes but they're really expensive. Maybe one day.
http://www.dairyfoodsconsulting.com/ (http://www.dairyfoodsconsulting.com/)
I've never used a ph meter for cheese only dry aged sausages. I must've been really lucky! Now I'll change my processes and get all confuzzled! LOL