Hi all,
Posting a half success/failure.
I made Mary Karlin's Farmhouse Chive Cheddar but used fresh sage from our garden instead. I followed her ingredients, amounts and method but substituted RA21 for the Meso II (1/2 t. for 2 gallons). I was still using the cheapest P/H milk I could find, knowing it would make a curd, and wouldn't cost too much if I screwed it up. I have since switched to a very nice (but expensive, c. $9/gallon) P/non-H milk (Strauss) and love the curd and color and flavor. :)
My notes show that I had trouble keeping the curds 100F while stir-cheddaring, and the curds were very milky and soft after the first pressing and stuck to the cloth. Second pressing was good. After almost 7 weeks aging I opened the cheese. It is very crumbly, very difficult to cut. Not hard, just crumbly, and even all the way through. The flavor is quite nice, identifiable as cheddar with a nice sage background, not too much sage as it can be a strong flavor.
Question: am I right in guessing that the crumbling is due to too much starter? I wonder if 1/4 t. or even 1/8 t. would be better for a 2 gallon batch.
Thanks for the input.
Congratulations in your sage cheddar! Crumbly is usually too much acidity from too much starter or other problems with the make. Sounds like you may have had problems with too much moisture in the curds during the make (milky soft curds during pressing) using the floc method may help you with that problem. Also adding the sage: did you boil the sage before adding it? If not it's a good idea to prevent contamination failures during the aging process.
I'm not as familiar with RA21, but I can tell you that I've found that almost all of Karlin's hard cheese recipes recommend too much culture for only 2 gallons....then they over acidify and almost always end up too "acidy" and crumbly.