My 20-gallon vat heats slowly, VERY slowly. What should take 30 minutes can easily take an hour. That said, what will be the lasting effects of slow heating be on the finished cheese?
Over acidification is a big concern. One of my recipes has a high fat content and ages for only 60 days. It should be creamy and sweet, not gritty and sour, which I'm finding to be the case when I tested it at three weeks. Yes, I know that's pretty early, but again the cheese only matures for 60 days, so it's already 40-percent aged.
I feel that the ph is out of whack, but I'm not sure where it deviated. Can it be resolved in 60 days?
What would you mature and older cheeses do? Would you continue raising the heat after adding cultures or through the coagulation process to get to the finish line faster? Or stay the course?
Thanks, Deanna
I'd suggest in your case to heat to temperature first, then adding your cultures for the length of time your recipe calls for.
Definitely. I always bring the milk up to temp first, which isn't a problem to wait awhile. The problem occurs when I can't get the vat to heat up fast enough when cooking the curd.
Ah, I see. Can you describe by what means you are using to heat the vat? Gas, electric, hot water? On a recent post an induction cooker was mentioned. It may help with that, but lets first see what you're using.
It's a 20-gallon steam kettle plumbed to a 50-gallon water heater set at 150-degrees. Unfortunately, due to sanitary concerns, the water isn't recirculating, but set on a low pressure drain.
Our standard batch is 18-gallons of milk. It's the amount of time it takes to cook the curd that's concerning. I'm cooking for a lot longer then any recipe calls for, because it takes so long to get up to temp, particularly with any longer aging cheese, like grana.
What's the longer cooking time doing to the resulting cheese? Will it be too acidic or not acidic enough. I've notice a slow pH decrease.
BackCountry,
Would you take a cake out of the oven and sample it if it were only 40% done? Would that be an indication of how the cake will turn out when fully cooked? Likewise, you cannot judge your cheese at 3 weeks.
The hardest lesson to learn in cheesemaking is patience.
I know, I know, I know. Patience is certainly a challenge.
Since the recipe went from 3 gallons to 18 gallons, I'm wondering a lot on what's going right and what's not. In a double boiler on the stove I could heat up milk and curd to exact specs, but now in the big vat it's not so easy. So couple my impatience with guesstimating and you've got one nerous little cheesemaker.
Any guess on what really slow cooking does to curd?
Since you are cooking the curd, why not heat up some water and use it to boost up the temp, maybe take some whey out first. Just be careful not to overshoot your desired temp.
If you heat too slowly before adding starter, contamination organisms have an opening to start multiplying and can gain a foothold.
I would add your starter early to outcompete the undesirables.
If you heat too slowly to reach scald/cook temp the starter bacteria will multiply and can produce too much acid.
A lot depends on the bacteria that you are using but you can compensate somewhat by adding less starter - much easier to control with Mother Cultures than DVI.
A pH meter really helps to understand what's going on.
QuoteThat said, what will be the lasting effects of slow heating be on the finished cheese?
When?
During time to temp, gives greater window for pathogens, especially psychotrophs, and delays culture response. As Sailor said, basically
During cook? At first fine, you want it very slow. But then, especially thermophiles, it will throw your rate of water loss and rate of acidity development out of whack. Fine for an uncooked tomme, or something like roquefort. Not fine for most everything else.
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I feel that the ph is out of whack, but I'm not sure where it deviated. Can it be resolved in 60 days?
What were your measurements during the make? Now that you're transitioning to a different batch size, the behavior is very, very different. Making cheese commercially is not that similar to making it in small batches. You have a fairly steep learning curve to adjust.
QuoteWould you continue raising the heat after adding cultures or through the coagulation process to get to the finish line faster?
Never through coagulation. Temp should never, (ever) fluctuate or have gradients between top and bottom when you add rennet, and after. Means no heating, and no fan blowing the top, or anything like that. Your curd will be crazy if you do. You will get proper curd in parts and odd curd in others. It will set in gradients based on the temp gradients.
I would rewire the vat and put in a new controller or rig up a better heating system or try to solve the root cause. And if not that, adjust my make for the cheese style.
Second what Sailor said, you're doing R&D right now. You have to treat this like an experiment and reduce variables so you get a stable recipe with your equipment. This is one of the hardest parts when you go pro, is that your old recipes don't work the same.
Still have a lot to figure out, but thank you for offering a base understanding of the problem(s) and some not-to-do's: I'll try less starter on upcoming batches; stay away from any heating during coagulation; determine if the cheeses we're making are the best for our equipment; and suck it up and buy a pH meter.
Thank you, all. Happy 4th of July weekend!
I have to agree with LB. In the long run, your best defense is to work out some way to do a proper heating schedule. Otherwise your makes will probably be really inconsistent from batch to batch. That's OK for a hobbyist, but not when you're selling cheese.
Agreed. What I'll probably end up doing (finances permitting) is buy a smaller water heater for potable water and keep the 50-gallon to recirc to the vat. Safety first for now.