Hello everyone, i am from Mexico and new to the cheesemaking. Very excited to learn a lot from the experience shared here and to start experiment different types of cheeses with different milks. By now i am triying with Chevre but dealing with floating curds obtained from not carefuly managed milk that i get from a small goat milk producer. I was very frustrated two times by this problem, but then i found simmilar cases in this forum and concluded that the option was to look for another producer. After read the valuable information that the community shares i decided to join with the intention of sharing also my fortcomming experiments. Let the obsession begin...
Welcome!
Sorry you had such a disappointing result on your very first effort with cheesemaking! I hope you can easily find a better source of raw milk.
If you want to do a simple test on milk before committing the whole batch to cheesemaking, place 1/2 cup or so of the raw milk in a sanitized glass with a lid. Warm the milk to body temperature by placing the jar in warm water for a bit. Then keep the jar at room temp (around 70 degrees F) for 24 hours (or however long it takes to gel, but 24 is ideal).
After that time, assess the milk. It should have a smooth curd, maybe with some whey around the sides/on top, no bubbles, with a simple tangy buttermilk aroma.
If it has bubbles, smells bad, has little bits of curd with lots of whey, or any other abnormality, best to pasteurize the milk first.
Heat it to 145+ and hold for 30 minutes. Cover the pot with foil and be sure to leave your stirring utensil in the pot the entire time.
Thank yoy Bantams for your response. I will try this technique the next time to confirm the quality of the milk. I know that there is a lot of discussion about raw vs pasteurized, but in your experience, the pasteurizing process that you shares affect the final flavors of the cheeses? Thank you again
You can make excellent cheese with both raw and pasteurized milk. Unless you directly compared the same cheese made with raw and pasteurized milk side by side, it would be difficult to tell unless you're an experienced cheese taster ;)
Raw aged cheeses have a much longer finish - the flavor just keeps going on and on and is more complex.
Pasteurized cheeses need a bit more culture, calcium chloride added, and may have a slightly weaker curd structure. But vat-pasteurized milk (as I described - 145/30 minutes) minimally alters the proteins and so many of the issues you'll read about with conventional store bought milk (161 degrees/15 seconds + homogenized) aren't going to be an issue. But still use calcium chloride for maximum yield.
All licensed/legal soft cheese or cheese aged under 60 days in the US must be made with pasteurized milk so you usually will see those recipes assuming pasteurized milk. For the fresh cheeses, the differences are subtle so there's less benefit to choosing raw milk than there is with aged cheeses (especially something like an Alpine style wheel).
In fact, you may prefer pasteurized for something like chevre as it will keep longer and it's much easier to get a nice white bloomy rind if you wanted to go that direction.
thank you again, i ll surely take your advices into account!