Hi all,
Couple of newbie questions - first off, what's in C201? I know I don't need to know, but I'm an analytic type, and I NEED to know! ::)
Second off - is it just me, are all the links to the wiki, and useful reference stuff (where I had hoped to be able to answer my own question), broken?
Thank you, kind people...
Sean
Ok, seems I answered my own question, sort of. Not very specific, though...
http://www.artisancheesemakingathome.com/pdfs/cultures.pdf (http://www.artisancheesemakingathome.com/pdfs/cultures.pdf)
C201 is a mix offered by NEC; it does not correspond directly to the major brands such as are listed in the chart that you linked. But here is a link that indicates that the mix includes ST, LH, and LDL: http://www.northernbrewer.com/thermophilic-culture-c201-5-packets (http://www.northernbrewer.com/thermophilic-culture-c201-5-packets)
Unfortunately, no company ever reveals the exact proportions for any mixed culture ...
As Andy pointed out ..
C201 is a NEC CULTURE BLEND that includes: lactose, (ST) streptococcus thermophilus, (LB) lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, (LH) lactobacillus helveticus
as found in this post: https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=12777.0 (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=12777.0)
No disrespect to their craft, and I thank them for their contributions to the home made cheese institution.... but, NEC is not very forthcoming to their mixed blended cultures... a great idea for entry level cheese makers and convenient... but they force you to buy their "mixed blends of cultures" to increase demand and supply for their own book. Some may have a problem with that. for example... what is the LACTOSE doing in the blend? .. not much I say.. but yet its a CUSTOM blend and small quantity in those little pre-measured envelopes... all for the purpose of additional profit... you could make all their recipes in their book with common (inexpensive) cultures... once you have the decoder ring :)
Ah, ok, I thought 'Thermophyllic Abiasa type C' on that chart corresponded approx. to the 'C201' I have. Plainly not.
I'm all new to this - my wife bought me the Caldwell book for my birthday, so I was casting about for the cultures mentioned therein, but in the UK, the suppliers seem to sell generic 'thermophyllic', etc, cultures, as opposed to named (eg) 'Abiasa Thermo B'. So, I ordered "Parmesan & Romano Starter: Thermophyllic', hoping it would do the trick, and what they sent was C201.
Thanks for your replies.
Well, C201 will indeed serve for parmesan/romano ... and pretty much anything else that calls for a thermo culture. My sense is that NEC makes their packages to be general purpose rather than specialized; i.e., I suspect their recipes call for using C201 for swiss, parmesan, asiago, mozzarella, etc. - where the varieties from Abiasa or Danisco or such may be a bit more specialized for a particular variety of cheeses.
For a home cheese maker, and even more for a newbie, NEC's approach makes sense; it is only as one gets more sophisticated in trying to achieve a just-so pH curve and flavor profile and so on that one probably needs to worry much about exactly what is in the blend. That said, the reason I don't use NEC's cultures is cost - it is much cheaper to buy bulk packets of various cultures and keep them in the fridge, mixing as needed and/or desired.
Thanks Andy - I'll use what I have for now, in that case...