Hi I'm Lennie and I'm from Hannibal MO. My wife bought me Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making and Tim Smith's Making Artisinal Cheese for Christmas. She knows I like hobbies, and she loves cheese! Great gal.
Anyway, I am a biochemist by training and an analytical chemist by trade so I udnerstand a little about enzymes and pH measurements. I was a cook for seven years during high school and college so I know my way around the kitchen and have a good sense of what works and what doesn't. I also brew beer and make wine so I have the beverages to go with some good cheese. From these hobbies I understand the importance of a good forum and this one looks to be full of good info and helpful people who won't mind answering stupid newbie questions.
I'm hoping to learn to make decent cheese. I ordered some supplies from Ricki Carroll's website: rennet tabs, blue cheese culture, direct pitch cultures for mesophilic and thermophilic cheeses, some good cheese cloth and a small mold. I am hoping to start with some nice cheddar and then try my hand at a Blue or Stilton. I'm going to make my own press since I do woodworking as well.
Wish me luck, I know I'm going to need it.
Good luck Lennie. I to brew beer. If you can al-grain brew you will find the techniques for making cheese easy to follow. Patience and attention to temperature are already learned.
I've been doing all-grain for a couple of years now. My specialites are pale ale, Belgian dubbel and an orange peel wheat. The worst habit I've developed from brewing is to "wing it" as far as recipes go. Seems like attention to detail and following insstructions closely might be more important with cheesemaking.
Hey, Tom, welcome to the forum and to cheesemaking.
I tend to wing it myself and have learned some good things through doing so. What I can play with and what I can't. If people didn't experiment, there would probably only be about three types of cheese out there - hard, soft, and very, very sticky cheese from aging the first two types for years on end (i.e., lost in the back of the fridge cheese).
I do recommend that you follow directions closely for the first few batches, at least, so that you get the hang of proper technique.
Welcome to the forum!
Hi Lennie in Missouri USA, welcome to this Forum, sounds like you have better a better background than most of us for this hobby! Suspect you and other bio types like linuxboy & Sailor will lose us in your language :o.
Books are great but being able to ask and help other people is whey better ;D.
Good luck, and have fun!
Good morning Lennie and welcome to the forum. Looking forward to your input.
Welcome to the forum Lennie, and I think you will do just fine with this cheesemaking hobbie thanks to your wife and this forum of course.
BTW, there is no stupid question, it is how we learn, isn't it.
As a starter , my first cheese was feta and I learn't great deal out of those experiments and they were all edible. Wouldn't cheddar be a little hard as a first cheese? May be not thinking about your background. A)
Good luck with the cheddar and most importantly have fun... :D
Quote from: Lennie on January 05, 2010, 04:27:20 AM
I've been doing all-grain for a couple of years now. My specialites are pale ale, Belgian dubbel and an orange peel wheat. The worst habit I've developed from brewing is to "wing it" as far as recipes go. Seems like attention to detail and following insstructions closely might be more important with cheesemaking.
To a certain degree that's true. Add more grain to beer won't hurt it and might even make it batter but adding more starter or rennet to cheese can make it bitter, crumbly or dry. Nothing wrong with mixing it up a bit though once you have an idea what it will do for you though.
Thanks for the welcome everyone.
Deb I'm learning fast to follow directions. I added a little extra acid to my mozz and got a big bowl of thick cottage cheese for my efforts. Great looking curds though! Baby steps.
If you have a microwave you might try nuking the "cotage cheese" on high for about20 seconds and kneading it for awhile. Try this at least 6 times before you start to see anything. If the curds start to come together you have be able to save the cheese. It seem to work mos of the time if you are patient enough to keep doing it over and over again. Oh and wear rubber gloves it's hot!
I waved it several times last night but I'll give it another go, I don't see eating the batch as it is.
I'm making another right now.
If it's really wet you might want to drain it first. I have had friends and make soggy oatmeal looking stuff that we recovered my nuking repeatedly. One took over 20 nukings!
Yes this stuff is like a cream soup, I've nuked it several times now and its still soupy. The whey isn't separating though, its just a creamy liquid. MAybe that means I didn't cook the curds long enough to get all the whey out? I'll keep nuking but its going to be awhile before this becomes thick.
Sounds like you didn't cook the curds enough. You did have curds but did yo cook them after cutting?
Oh why oh why?
Of seven cheese varieties I've made, I found Mozzarella to be the most difficult. Like others have said, the temperature has to be high enough to make it melt, and there's also that PH thing that has to be checked.
For me, the Gouda and Colby were the easiest to make. I cannot believe how easy they are to make and how perfect they turn out.
The Baby Swiss was easy to make, and it looks and smells terrific. The problem was to keep it dry while curing.
The Havarti is easy to make, too. There was some oozing and smelling during curing, but that went away after three weeks, not sure why that happened.
Mascarpone was a challenge, but finally got it going with Flora Danica culture. Now I gotta work on the flavor, which I think I got it figured out.
With your chemistry background, you should be cheeseing in no time.
Have fun on your cheese adventures.
:)
I figured out pretty quick that mozzarella wasn't the easiest cheese to make after reading some of the posts in that section.
Debi I cooked the curds at 108 for about 30 minutes but that apparently wasn't enough. And I didn't drain them all that long so that didn't help. I waved the stuff multiple times last night and eventually got it thickened up and made into a ball. It still wasn't shiny or stretching but it held together at least. I wrapped it in plastic rap and put it in the fridge and this morning it was very hard. I cut a piece off and it kind of broke off, a little like a hard mozz. Tasted good. Thanks for the advice to stay with it, this will at least be edible now.
Welcome Lennie!
I'm chemical engineer and i do believe you will make excellent cheeses with all your knowledge :)
Moz has to be pH 5.2-5.4 before it will stretch. If it's high, it won't stretch. If it's too low, it becomes brittle.
Mine is mushy, and a little grainy in the sense that the curds never completely melt together into a uniform mass.
I just need to practice more.
Well it is a learning experience. At least you managed to save it sort of. When that happens it never recovers perfectly but will be edible if you hang in there. I hate to see food go to waste.
Grainy and grey is probably over acidified. However, sometimes certain brands of milk just won't work. Avoid ultrapasteurization.
QuoteMine is mushy, and a little grainy in the sense that the curds never completely melt together into a uniform mass.
Does it look like a cauliflower?
Mine did on my first attempt.
:)
Like a creamy soup with cauliflower bits. :-X
QuoteLike a creamy soup with cauliflower bits
That's funny, though somehow it sounds a little yummy.
A good suggestion I got when I started was to keep a notebook of what methods and recipes worked for me, so that I develop a favorite recipe.
Keep us posted on your endeavors.
:)
I forgot to mention that I am getting some assistance from an article on mozz making that showed up in the Jan'10 Brew Your Own magazine, a magazine devoted to homebrewing. They have good instructions and pictures, and the references include the two books my wife bought for me (Carroll and Smith). They used a kit from New England for the mozz.
I'm coming to the conclusion that my curds are somehow too wet when I try to melt them. This is just something I need to get the feel for. At least the time spent isn't great and milk is under $3/gal here. I'm eating my mistakes as a farmer's cheese, grind a little pepper and sprinkle some oregano on it and even the mistakes are decent eating.
The wife tried to use my first mozz ball on an eggplant parmesan dish (this was the stuff I microwaved to death) and it didn't melt, just browned and was dry. My ricotta was excellent though.
I will have to go find my copy of BYO I haven't even read the last several issues - too blinded by cheese right now to even read my brew mail.
Moz curds can't be too wet to melt (stretch). The classic technique is to soften the curds in hot water (or whey) to make it pliable enough to stretch.
It's either your pH or a milk brand that will NEVER work. Try a different milk.
I've used three brands of storebought milk now. I've ordered some citric and will try that, maybe my acid blend is putting the pH out of whack (although the pH paper seems to show it is in the right range).
Can overcooking also mess things up? Or not getting the curds hard enough before cutting? I may have done both of those in the last two batches.
Not getting the curds firm enough before cutting is defianalely a problem you could end up with mush if you stir them when they are to soft.
So can overcook the curds but I don't think that was your problem.