I will be heading off to West Pawlet, Vermont for a two-day cheese making class with Peter Dixon; held at Consider Bardwell farms.
Just wondering if anyone else here has done the same class, or another with Mr. Dixon?
Would love to hear the notes on the class you're taking! Is it a general class or specified type of cheese? Do keep us posted...
It's a 2-day course for Beginner Cheesemakers, [www.dairyfoodsconsulting.com]
and I'll post some commentary on my blog (see my website-icon with my user-name) and post some pictures here as well.
I'm pretty psyched about it; just wondering if anyone on this Forum has heard of him or been to his classes.
Anyone?....
Heard of him? Yes. Many members here reference him and his site, which both seem very accurate and knowledgeable. I'd love to take the course, but there's no way I'd get out to VT to do it. I'm very excited to hear about your experience there though!
Well I learned a lot of different things by taking the Beginner Cheesemaking class and overall I'm happy I went.
One of the first important things I got was that the 'aging/storage aspects' of cheesemaking are of equal importance (if not more) to the 'making aspects'. Having a well designed cheese cave (or multiple caves) is critical for anyone trying to produce high-quality, marketable product. Cave space is often under-estimated by farmstead cheesemakers and soon you're wondering where to put all those wheels!
I learned why I have not been getting very good cheeses; I've been using too much culture and too much rennet. But here's the thing, I've been following book recipes. The 1 or 2 gallon batch requires so little of both that its real easy to overdose the make. I learned that if I want to really learn this craft I have to start measuring and in some cases adjusting pH.
The class had 10 people and we were able to make a 15 gallon batch of Tomme very similar to one of Consider Bardwell Farm's products. We saw the cheese room in operation, the vat, the brine-room, caves, packaging room. We watched the cutting and hooping of about 150 gallons of milk into 3 large wheels of cheese.
We talked a lot about milk quality and what steps farmers can take to adjust to the changing nature of milk over the lactation period. This seems to really affect farmers whose herds are on a very seasonal breeding cycle; spring births and winter dry periods. Also, he explained his preference for pasture-grazed milk instead of feeding silage.
Peter really knows his stuff and has a very wide range of experiences to draw from, even working with Eastern European cheesemakers where resources and regulations are quite different from Vermont.
So, I give his classes a big thumbs up!
So jealous :)
Could you speak in more detail about using too much rennet or culture? I (think I) understand using too much culture, as the acid will eventually develop, but what about the rennet?
I just made feta, and I was curious as to why it calls for twice as much as the mozzarella recipe.
I agree with him, using too much culture and more so, too much rennet are the two most common pitfalls. Using too much culture, especially without a pH meter leads to too rapid of an acidification. And when you follow the time-based recipes that only say to stir for a certain number of minutes, you end up with a crumbly, crappy cheese. DVI culture has something like 100-150 x 10^9 CFUs per gram. That's concentrated stuff.
When you use too much rennet, you throw off the entire proteolysis cascade. Rennet isn't just for coagulating milk. It's a protein-specific enzyme. It acts on casein and breaks it down. Initially, by cleaving k-casein on the outer edge of micelles, but later, by continuing to open up those micelles and making them available to additional proteases in the milk and in the bacterial cell walls and bodies. It's a huge deal to use too much rennet. This is also why flocculation is so important. If you time floc, you can target a rennet schedule to coincide with expected conditions. Meaning for most cheeses, at least 10 mins to floc, or you are simply using too much rennet. It should be closer to 12-15, and in a good number of cheese styles, closer to 18-20. Use too much, you get accelerated proteolysis, in a bad way, meaning bitter amino acids and protein chains. Similar thing happens when your temp is too high -- you throw off the natural sequence that should happen gradually. It's like boiling wine to try and speed up the rate of tannin and SO2 interaction (for you winemakers). Sure, you accomplish that aspect of it, but your wine is then undrinkable.
Which feta recipe did you use, Tom? In general, the rennet schedule, using American double strength standardized rennet (30,000, as opposed to European, which is 20,000), should be .03-.-045 ml per lb of milk for most cheeses. Meaning about 3-4.5 ml rennet per hundredweight. Using a "teaspoon" measure for rennet for homemakers is notoriously inconsistent... just hard to get the ultra small quantities needed.
I used Ricki Carrol's recipe, which I documented here (http://"https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3533.msg27979.html").
The rennet was 1/2 tablet for the 1 gallon of milk.
Thanks for the scientific, precise descriptions. Although the jargon is slightly above my head, I need to learn as much as possible if I want to learn everything I can. Although I've just made 3 cheeses, I'm trying to compare the mozzarella vs. feta recipes to determine what really makes one different from the other -- or, what can I change in one to achieve a different result. But that's for much later :)
Tom,
Ricki Carroll has been my primary source until now. I used as little as a 1/4 tab of rennet and I still had flocculation in under 5 minutes. I think the overdose of culture may also affect that, too.
Here's the real-world example I can share: our class made a raw-milk Tomme cheese using about 15 gallons (that's 7 times the size of my stove-top batches) and Peter advised using 1/16 tsp. of Choozit MA 4001 culture! Same Choozit culture you or I can buy from NE Cheesemaking Supply. That's like a PINCH!
And our cheeses (4 of them) all hit the projected pH of 5.2 by the next morning after pressing; right on target.
whoa! 1/16t ! Good to know! Looks like I will be saving some $$
If using raw milk, you don't even need to use culture if you preripen the milk. It's commonly used to try and maintain flavor consistency, and to introduce specific strains; like for 4001, it adds diacetylactis and thermophilus to complement the natural meso bacteria. For pasteurized store bought milk, it is still appropriate to use .5-2 units per hundredweight, depending on the cheese and culture selection/acidification rate. If you want to save money and use pasteurized milk, you can make a bulk starter the night before using a pinch of DVI culture and the volume of skim milk or 11% reconstituted milk to equal your desired inoculation rate, from 1-2.5%.
Valuable information! Thanks to both of you! Send along anything else that you learned from the class--any cheese recipes?
Quote from: linuxboy on April 09, 2010, 11:41:25 PM
If using raw milk, you don't even need to use culture if you preripen the milk. It's commonly used to try and maintain flavor consistency, and to introduce specific strains; like for 4001, it adds diacetylactis and thermophilus to complement the natural meso bacteria. For pasteurized store bought milk, it is still appropriate to use .5-2 units per hundredweight, depending on the cheese and culture selection/acidification rate. If you want to save money and use pasteurized milk, you can make a bulk starter the night before using a pinch of DVI culture and the volume of skim milk or 11% reconstituted milk to equal your desired inoculation rate, from 1-2.5%.
I am just familiarizing myself with Peter Dixon's recipes and I saw he gives directions in units per hundredweight. Can you explain or direct me to where I might understand what this means and how to calculate?
Thanks
Nitai
Oh, that's just 100 lbs of milk. He lists the conversions to the left
CONVERSIONS
1 GALLON = 3.785 LITERS
0.26 GALLON = 1 LITER
1 OUNCE = 28 MILILITERS
1 POUND = 454 GRAMS
2.2 POUNDS = 1 KILOGRAM
DAIRY CONVERSIONS
2.27 POUNDS = 1 LITER COW OR GOAT MILK
2.31 POUNDS = 1 LITER SHEEP MILK
1.03 KILOGRAM = 1 LITER COW OR GOAT MILK
1.05 KILOGRAM = 1 LITER SHEEP MILK
8.6 POUNDS = 1 GALLON COW OR GOAT MILK
8.74 POUNDS = 1 GALLON SHEEP MILK
Thanks for sharing the info from your class, Hopoil.
And thanks for this discussion, very informative.
Linux, what I dono't understand is what is .5-2 units per hundredweight. What are units?
See http://www.cheeseforum.org/Glossary.htm#Direct_Culture_Unit (http://www.cheeseforum.org/Glossary.htm#Direct_Culture_Unit)
Danisco calls them DCU, other makes call them units. One unit represents at least 2.1^10 bacteria cells. When you buy DVI culture, it will say 10, 25, 50, 100, etc units, for you to reweigh and use in smaller batches.
Note that many recipes out there, and manufacturer guidelines, suggest usages that far exceed my personal .5-2U/100 lb rule of thumb. Sometimes, I think this is valid, other times, it seems excessive. It depends on what the cheese needs, type of culture, how fresh the culture is, etc. Some of it has to do with the milk you use... some milk is more conducive to faster bacterial growth. What I'm trying to say is that many recipes out there are a guideline for what worked for one person at one point in time. They are rarely recipes used by DOC/AOC makers, or recipes used by commercial cheese plants. There are some exceptions... for example many of the recipes people have posted here will produce great cheeses, and many of those are commercial quality or better. Cheesemaking is not easy, there are so many factors to manage. That's why this board is such a great resource - you can try something out and if it doesn't work, post about it and many people try to help. :)