Hello to all! I used to raise beautiful champion show dairy goats. However, as everyone can tell I know the animals not the cheese ;) I'm clearly still learning that aspect. I haven't been breeding goats for a long time now and when I was I was only making chevre with the vinegar method. Well, now I'm getting back into goats and as of tomorrow I'll be milking my new herd. So, my question is....what differences will I see in the goat milk compared to the Jersey milk I've been using for the hard cheese. Also, are there any major changes to hard cheese recipes since I'll be using goats milk? Thank you all for the help!
It depends on the type of goats you raise and the solids in your milk. It's not that different than switching from Jersey to Holstein milk. You will have to adjust rennet amounts and temperature/stir schedules to accommodate for the solids content and how the curds behave.
What breed are you getting?
Generally Holstein and goats milk are quite similar in their properties. When you make fresh cheese the kind you have to hang in cheese cloth to drain, the whey leeks slower than with goats milk cheese than with cows milk cheese.
Thanks....I've used holstien before so that helps....they are Saanen goats so I'm guessing even more like holstien. We bred Saanen and Toggs before.
It depends on your genetics and feed program. My goat's milk is functionally really similar to sheep's milk. Even though the micelle sizes are much, bigger than sheep's, my BF is 5-6%, so it's nothing like Alpine milk, which is 3.5% BF. So it's hard for me to generalize here. If I used all of the recipes out there as-is, I would have terrible results.
Saanens are generally about 3.0 protein, and around 3.5-3.8% BF with good genetics and feed. This is classic, good quality goat milk. Meaning when switching from Jersey milk you will notice that it doesn't set up quite as thick, and at times, such as winter, you may need to add CaCl2. You also usually don't need to heat it as high as Jersey milk because it will reach the final moisture target a little faster.