Hello,
Can you keep and maintain a brine made with whey as you can a brine made with water? Or is it something that you only use one time?
I typically use a water based brine, but decided to try using my whey from my last tomme batch to brine it, seems to be working well but I dont know if I can keep it at 55 degrees for later use or if I need to toss it....
Thanks!
You can definitely reuse whey brine, but storing at 55F without treatment is risky. I would put it in milk jugs, add a few drops of bleach, and stick it in your frig. When you reuse, you with have to replenish the salt and calcium.
Actually, Sailor has suggested I switch to brine a while back and it's MUCH better. The rind grows so much nicer. I also use it to wash cheese now. Fantastic. I really like that before using whey I had to measure the pH of the brine and add a bit of vinegar to it until it is matching the cheese (around 5.5pH). With the whey, the pH follows the pH of the curd that came out of it a few hours ago -very closely so no more worries or extra work with vinegar. THANKS SAILOR!!!
Actually, I usually add a LITTLE vinegar to balance out the acidity. I measure the pH of the whey and the pressed cheese and adjust accordingly.
Does it matter if I heat up the whey and take off the resulting ricotta before using the whey for brine?
Susan
Nope. Still better than water based brine. But you still need to add in some CaCl2
I never had to add vinegar since I began using whey for brine. the pH is always a good match and the cheese matures beautifully.
As for heating the whey, I heat 2 cups of whey quite high so that the kosher salt would dissolve in it. I then cool this down to room temp (very rapidly to prevent bacteria buildup) and add the rest of the whey that was never heated. This assures that the salt is dissolved and that most of the whey is alive and active.
If you reuse whey brine, the pH and calcium levels will change. Francois says that they have been using the same batch of whey brine for a long time (since he got there?). They manage potential contamination with chlorine dosing.
Yes, I read that post. I think this was for some kind of feta. A mother culture brine... I bet you can use it as a starter for some other cheese too if it didn't have chlorine in it. I am just a bit weary of chlorine in my cheese.
As for the pH levels, I don't reuse it, I only use the whey from a specific cheese to treat that very same batch. The pH usually follows within the .2+/- range I also find it more effective because whatever bacterium I have inoculated into the milk is also present in the whey on some level.
I tried the whey brine once. I heated the whey after making a gouda and added the salt. After that the brine had a kind of funky, strong smell. The rest of the brine that I hadn't heated smelled fine.. almost sweet. After a few hours I couldn't take it and dumped the whey brine and make a water brine. Does it always change the smell? Or maybe I needed to cool it faster?
Susan
Can i use iodized salt, it's a little hard to find un iodized salt here. Is there alternative?
You need to use uniodized salt. Pickling salt or Kosher salt is readily available.
Susan - then don't heat it. ;)
Susan, you can heat it to pasteurization point and cool it down very rapidly. Below that, or with long cooling you will get bacteria to make changes and acidify the whey.
Yeri, I use Kosher Salt too. I love the Diamond brand because it contains purely salt and no anti caking agents or iodine added. Does all salt where you live have iodine added to it?
I guess I felt like I needed to heat it to get enough salt into solution. But I certainly could've cooled it more quickly. I'll try that next time. Thanks for the tips!
Susan
Iratherfly : yes almost all salt at my country is iodized, there is a recommendation from the goverment of indonesia to seel iodized salt due to health concern, since then it was hard to find un-iodized one. i think i'm in trouble here if can not find the un-iodized salt. can someone have solution?
actually i can buy uniodized salt from the salt farmer near the ocean near my hometown, but it need about 2 hour or 3 hours trip. :) i hope i can find it without 3 hours trips......
Actually, sea salt has natural iodine in it. I bet the government rule is only regarding table salt and not other cooking salts. Use coarse Kosher salt or Pickling salt instead. I am sure you can find them. Whatever coarse salt they use in your country to ferment or pickle food is probably it.
thanks for the info guys, i will try to search the salt at local market here. i hope i can find it, i can not find it at the supermarket perhaps i can find it at the local market. :)
Wow, I go away for a while and I have so many answers!
Thanks for the conversation on whey brine. I did go ahead a make one, used it for my latest tomme. I didnt feel comfortable putting bleach in it though... instead I jarred up 2 pints of it, put it inthe freezer for 2 days ( to kill anything...probably doesnt work....) and have it in the back of my fridge to keep for washing my cheese.
It sure smells better than a water based brine. Im still wondering though if I saved it long term for brining other types of cheeses ( I know that I would have to correct the calcium and salt each time) if it is a problem to use it on different types of cheeses... say I made it from brine from a tomme, can I brine my swiss with it too? or would that be weird? I know it would not be a good idea to save whey for brine that was made with pen. roq. or candidum. Am I right??
Thanks so much!
The brining happens the next day after making the cheese, so I am not sure when you have time to do this process of freezing it for 2 days, defrosting it etc. (Many bacterium just "goes to sleep" when you freeze them and "wake up" as soon as they reach warmth again). The curd and whey have the same bacterium so I am not sure what it is you are trying to kill or eliminate. After all, this is the bacterium you put in the milk with the intention to grow it so why are you afraid of it growing? Don't worry about pathogens your 18% salt would kill them anyway. I would only use whey from a cheese to brine that very same cheese. That would be old whey! (and may not have the same bacterium in it if it's a different type of cheese)
i put the brine in the freezer after brining the cheese, just an amount enough to do subsequent cheese washes. The brine doesnt freeze, the salt content is too high, it stays liquid. I was simply trying to avoid using bleach to store it.
Quoteknow that I would have to correct the calcium and salt each time)
Not the calcium, only the salt. Calcium adjustment is only for fresh brines
Yeri, If you can get sea salt direct from the salt farmers in Indonesia, then get it !!!! :) thats exactly what you want!!!! the amount of iodine in natural sea salt is next to nothing. and it wont affect your cheese in any way. That is the "perfect salt" for cheeses and curing.
Hugh
I was told that rock salt is good for cheese making? Its also cheaper and easy to get hold of compared to kosher salt.
Quote from: susanky on November 22, 2010, 01:15:42 AM
I guess I felt like I needed to heat it to get enough salt into solution. But I certainly could've cooled it more quickly. I'll try that next time. Thanks for the tips!
Susan
Part of my cheese make includes collecting the fresh warm whey in the gallon jugs from which I poured the milk. It takes little effort to add the salt through a funnel to the whey in the jug, swirl it around to dissolve it, and place it in the fridge to cool down. When the cheese comes out of the press, the cool whey-brine is ready to go. Works for me.
-Boofer-
I don't want to kill the bacterium and enzymes in the whey so I boil only a small portion of it (maybe a 1/4 or 1/5 of the final brine I need) - just enough to get the salt dissolved. I then add the 4 or 5 portions of fresh room temp (or curd temp) whey to it so most of the whey is active and fresh.
What a resourceful thread! I have 3 cheese recipe books (Morris', Debra's and Leener's) and none of them mention adding whey instead of water for a brine.
Thanks peeps, this is exactly why I read these boards every day! ;D
Awesome Spoons!
the big cheese - I wouldn't use rock salt; I don't think its salinity is the same and it's a bit unpredictable in my opinion. Also takes longer to break down which is important when you are trying to make brine or direct-salt cheese.
Kosher salt is VERY easy to find, most supermarkets carry it. It's a coarse salt and it has very balanced and clean "salt only" flavor. It is used in so many recipes because it dissolves so well in liquid (even if you don't boil it) and because it's not iodized. (Iodine in salt can kill off desirable bacteria in cheese aging, meat curing or pickling).
In spite of its exotic name (it's the type of salt use for the koshering process of meats) it has nothing to do with being Kosher (and often isn't even kosher certified) and you don't need to find a kosher store for it. Kosher pickles too are often not kosher at all but are just called this way because the brine is salted with kosher salt. When you get Kosher salt, always try to get one that doesn't contain anti-caking agents. Just pure salt. I use the Diamond brand. If you can't find Kosher salt, just use table salt that isn't iodized and has no anti-caking additives (cellulose, silicone dioxide etc.) You can also get "cheese salt" from the same place that sells you your cheese cultures. I think it's just a finer ground version of Kosher salt (I think)