I am a new cheesemaker. I was taught to make cheese at a local class from goat farm. If this seems like a silly question to you, I apologize, but I have already figured out that while she often has an answer, she is not always accurate.
I buy my goat milk at a licensed grade A raw milk dairy.
I was taught by her that you have to heat treat the milk before making chevre. I did not like the consistency of the cheese when I followed her directions, so I purchased the direct set cultures from NEcheesmaking supply. I bought milk yesterday and just followed the directions on the package. This of course did not include heat treating the milk above 86 degrees.
After I realized what I had done, I called her to see if it was still "safe" to eat or not and she replied it would only be safe for about 3 days.
Is this correct? Accurate? I hate to lose all this... I had made it intending to take it to work over the weekend, but since I work at a hospital, I really don't want to make my co-workers sick!
I buy my goat milk from a friend who has a very clean operation. I make chevre every other week and have never heat treated the milk. In fact, my recipe calls for heating the milk to 76F before adding the starter.
I have never had a problem. I find my cheese usually lasts about 10 days, but it is usually long gone before that. As long as it tastes OK, I wouldn't worry about it.
Some people have issues with raw milk fresh cheeses, some don't. You'll have to decide for yourself.
Pam
I have never heard of cheese becoming "unsafe" after 3 days. Maybe if you leave it out on the sidewalk or something but properly refrigerated it should last a week to 10 days at least.
My raw chevre we vacuumed packed to see how long it would last. At 14 days we gave up and ate it. I never have problem with the raw milk, in fact I don;t pasturize ANYTHING.
We have 2 goats and a milk cow... Yum yum.
I was using Rikkis fresh culture method (from new england cheesemaking), and I found that doing it for several months the fresh culture was hard to keep from getting more and more sour. So I switched to a direct set with mm100 and I love it. Same procedure, but no longer have to worry about how old my "fresh culture" Is. I have some of her direct set cultures too that already have rennet in them and I find they have too much renet and the cheese gets too firm. Just my 2 cents.
We have several thread about what the best cultures are for chevre.
I honestly wouldn't worry about the cheese, esp. if the dairy is fairly small.
Thanks everyone. I suspected it was a little off. She has said other things that make me wonder sometimes too. Like during another cheese class she told someone you can't make mozzarella with anything less than whole milk. I had a batch I made with 2% in my fridge at that very moment.
Minamyna- I agree about this culture. I think it would be good for molded chevre, but it broke up into soft crumbles when I went to salt it. Not really as creamy as I would have liked and of course I had no whey left.
The previous batch I had made was using buttermilk as a culture and it had a strange stretchiness to it when you tried to get some out with a knife or cracker. Sometimes snapping right back down into the cheese. I didn't like that either. I will check out the other thread for ideas.
The dairy is 16 goats. Small in my book.
Thanks again. I will eat this cheese and won't worry about the raw part.
If you are buying milk from a Grade A Raw milk dairy, I'd guess it is very safe. And I concur with others, I do everything with raw milk. No one ever gets sick. I even have gallons of skimmed raw milk sitting around. I just doesn't got "bad". It may get really, really sour and have other off flavors but it is not unsafe. Our pigs can attest to that!
I'm just starting to teach some cheese classes in my home. I hope I don't disappoint like yours did! Yikes!
Kristin