TL;DR: The best recipe and method is here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10373.0.html), the washing is explained here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10633.0.html), the harp cutter here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,12157.0.htm), mother cultures here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,5165.0.html). The Ph markers are 6.8 (start), 6.65 (rennet), 6.4 (form), 5.35 (brine).
ContextI discovered this forum 5 yeas ago when I started to explore making my own charcuterie and cheese. This is by far the best online resource I've found for making cheese at home.
This is my first thread. I never felt like opening a new topic since all I do has been covered more extensively, by more knowledgeable people, in the past. But I wanted to do a small tribute as a way of thanks for Alpkäserei. He also asked for the pH markers, and since he's no longer active and won't be able to edit his topic, I felt it was ok to start a new one.
Alpkäse is not something I'd have thought making when I started, it didn't even register in my to-do list at all. My favorite cheese was well aged Manchego, and my wife's was Parmesan. For us Alpine cheeses were something you used for fondue and therefore a commodity you didn't need nor want to invest the time and do yourself.
But after seeing how passionate Alpkäserei was about no-holes-allowed, well-aged, no-fondue Alpine cheeses, and given the detailed procedures he had shared, I couldn't resist giving it a try.
Now Alpkäse is our favorite cheese and I've made it more often than the next two or three combined.
Process
- pH targets: start 6.8, rennet 6.6-6.7, whey pitch 6.3-6.4, brine 5.3-5.4
- Milk: 6G Jersey (raw). I've used 5.5G store bought skim milk plus 64oz non-homogenized heavy cream a few times with good results.
- Starter Culture: I use mother cultures at 1% thermo and 1% meso. When I don't have them available I go with 0.1g AlpD+0.05g Su Casu, dissolving in 60ml non-chlorinated water, wait 5 min for it to rehydrate, mix and stir.
- Ripen: Split the milk in 2 containers. When at room temperature add culture to one, cover, and set apart 30-60 mins or until pH drop. Increase temp of the other to 100F. Then slowly mix the reserved half and bring mix to 91F.
- Adds: If you are using lipase, dissolve 0.05g in 50ml non-chlorinated water, let stand 20 mins, add to milk and stir. If your milk is not raw, add CaCl2. The solid food-grade one is way cheaper than the liquid one sold for cheese-making, just need to weight 1/3 or what the recipe calls for to water. So if you're doing 6G of store bought milk, dissolve 2g solid CaCl2 in 60ml non-chlorinated water, stir in and let it rest for a minute before adding to milk. Lipase and CaCl2 should be added 10+ min after culture, 10+ mins before rennet.
- Rennet: Dissolve as needed to set milk in 30mins in 50ml non-chlorinated water. I do 3.5g double-strength, whisk milk top-down vigorously for a minute to get that Jersey fat back in, then add dissolved rennet to milk slowly stirring constantly for a minute.
- Coagulation: Check flocculation after 8 mins, 2.5 flocculation, target is 30 mins
- Cutting Curd: Cut slowly. First center, then 1" in parallel. Long side before short one. Slowly stir the curd and cut larger chunks to 1". Continue until whey changes color from white to yellow, ~10 mins, then start to cut slowly in an 8 pattern with cheese harp until curd is pea size in another ~10 mins
- Maintain: Stir slowly in an 8 pattern for 40 min (with something blunt, not the harp).
- Cook curd: Heat to 125F over 40 min, never over 1F/min. Keep stirring slowly and continuously. Do not get to 125F early, or otherwise finish this step even if the 40 mins are not over
- Maintain: Stop the heating, stir 5 mins more, away from heat (120F+)
- Press Under ~120F whey: 30-60 mins, 5-20 lbs, flipping 3 or 4 times.
- Press outside of whey: 12-24 hours, until pH 5.3-5.4. Start with ~5xcheese weight, go to x8-10, flip often, soak in reserved whey to avoid sticking to cloth. For my 6G makes I do 25 lbs for 4-6 hours then 50 lbs for 10-12 hours.
- Salt: Brine 6-9 hours at 18% salt by water weight (add 5g CaCl2 and 5ml white vinegar per gallon of water -or enough vinegar to lower pH to 5.3-5.4)
- Air Dry: Leave in ripening box at room temp 6-12h flipping at least once
- Age: 50-55F 80-85H Wash daily for 10 days, then weekly for 2 months. Age at least 1 year
Pictures(https://i.imgur.com/Ou7HHwl.jpg)
3 Gallons of raw Jersey Milk mixed with the mother cultures as explained here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,5165.0.html), about to get the lid on and rest while I heat the other half. 2/3 6" deep hotel pan.
(https://i.imgur.com/XwUJ5Vb.jpg)
6G mixed and heating to 91F in full 8" hotel pan over a bain marie. I originally get this pan to SV in the 2/3 6" (3G capacity), but I quickly wanted to make larger wheels and added the bain marie set instead of a double hotel pan.
(https://i.imgur.com/ee6rpwz.jpg)
Mixed the rennet. I love the lids to help against accidental contamination, although in Alpkäse you spend so much time stirring it's not as helpful as in Chaource, for example.
(https://i.imgur.com/r1YqGzo.jpg)
Bowl is no longer spinning.
(https://i.imgur.com/taNUWLI.jpg)
First "coarse" cut.
(https://i.imgur.com/w14rQg5.jpg)
Reducing the curd to pea size with the harp cutter – I love it, took the idea from here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,12157.0.htm). I drilled ½" spacing in two sides and 1/3" in the other two so I can get all common sizes depending on how I thread the fishing wire.
(https://i.imgur.com/KPC1Jqu.jpg)
Stirring the curds in an 8 pattern -curd should not be this color yet, I reduced with the harp too quickly this time... in my defense I was distracted writing the instructions and taking the pictures for this post ☹
(https://i.imgur.com/eKqdiKl.jpg)
Curd is no longer milky and white, and it's time to turn the heat on and cook it slowly.
(https://i.imgur.com/01KNTnw.jpg)
Pressing under whey, I started with 10 and went up to 20 lbs over a couple of hours, flipping six times total.
(https://i.imgur.com/cUbKMV3.jpg)
I initially planned to build this press (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,14493.0.html), but put together something quickly with materials I had handy because I already had the raw milk... and it's been four years and counting... it's roomy around to wrap in seedling heat mats when I need to press at 70-90F. I have put 300lbs on it without an issue, and that's enough for all the cheeses I've made so far. I should have built it shorter, but I had no experience making cheese and I saw some people talking about piling two forms one over the other or using double Dutch presses, so I made it tall just in case. It hasn't flipped over so far so I haven't bothered.
(https://i.imgur.com/lnGNs1a.jpg)
I usually put 1% of the cheese weight in salt over the top, and again when I flip in the middle of the brining period. That keeps the brine at ~18% with very little adjustments, which is where I try to have it.
(https://i.imgur.com/HhyQZb8.jpg)
I used to air dry before and after brining, in a ripening container. Now I brine directly depending on the time of the day and use no container since humidity inside the cheese is high enough anyway for the ~6 hours I'll leave it on the counter (in my limited experience).
(https://i.imgur.com/UWlWYnp.jpg)
And finally here it is, ready to get its first wash per Alpkäserei's instructions (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10633.0.html). You can see a 1 month, 3 month, 5 month siblings on the side. At 6 months I vacuum seal them to make space in the cave. In the bottom shelf there are other cheeses that were due a wash that day (Mahón, Tête de Moine, and Appenzeller).
Mornduk, this is a fantastic post, so much focused information about so many topics in the post, the links, and even under the photos! I read it through once but now am going to go back and read the whole thing carefully, probably several times, an awful lot to chew on here. I don't think I've ever seen a recipe which troubleshoots every question before it is asked like this, pretty amazing. This is definitely going into the alpine research primer/file in its entirety.
A cheese for you, I just wish I could make it ten. I think Alp would be honored. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
ETA: a question, which meso/thermo cultures did you use to make the two mother cultures? I just started looking at alpine recipes and it seemed like at least as far as the thermo part goes Thermo C was a good basic culture for them? More comfortable with mesos, but finding the thermos a bit harder to assess.
Thanks mexicalidesi.
I think you would be ok with Thermo C, it has helveticus and thermophilus. Probably any thermo would work. I use that proportion of AlpD and Su Casu because it was the closer to mimic the objective mix with the cultures I had on hand at that point, and it has worked so far. I would use Thermo B or Thermo C without hesitation if I ran out of the other ones. There was a discussion about it here (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10223.msg76064.html#msg76064).
I tried to get the culture that Alpkäserei used (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10215.msg76443.html#msg76443), MK 410 Lyo, but they politely told me they do not ship outside Switzerland. Now I haven't been there in six years but next time I'm around you can bet I'll try to get some. On the mother cultures, I just incubated the same culture mix in different containers, one at room temperature and one at 110F, so I would have a meso and a thermo part. Now next steps would be to play with different ratios and develop my own whey culture (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10345.0.html), but I haven't had time to geek that out yet and I'm not sure my 6G/week cheesemaking could sustain it (I only do mother cultures because they can be frozen).
Thanks for all of this! I was literally talking to my wife about the need for making this kind of cheese last night :-) The whey culture thread is amazing too. Since I have no source of raw milk, I'm actually thinking about getting a "kefir culture" (basically *not* kefir, but a fairly complex mix of strains of bacteria *without* the yeasts) and using that for adding complexity to the culture. However, this looks like a complete PITA :-) Basically you either have to make cheese or yogurt every day, if I understand correctly. Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Linuxboy's comment about multi-stage cultures made me think of Yorkshire Wensleydale. I was reading the PDO document the other day and they *require* a 6 stage culture. It was the first time I'd heard of it, but I guess it's much more common than I thought.
Just an update, today it became 1 month old and I gave it the last daily wash. I'll start doing weekly ones for the next couple of months and then let it alone. I know my own post says 10 days of daily but I'm planning to let this one age for 2+ years if possible so I wanted a thick rind.
(https://i.imgur.com/eGXWEwR.jpg)