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I read that Mesolithic generally refers to culture that existed in North-western Europe around 10,000 - 5,000 years ago, but may have started much earlier in the middle east.

So I've got some of this (it must keep very well! And they didn't even have fridges in those days, Fred Flintstone for example used to chill his beers in a mastodon) and the instructions say I have to make it into a litre of starter culture and incubate it for 24 hrs, but I just want to make my first cheeses with a litre of milk at a time.

So can I start my cheese by putting a 1/4 tsp of the Misanthropic Culture in a litre of goats milk at 30c and leaving it to ripen for 45 mins? Then add rennet and leave for 12-18 hours at > 20 degrees Celsius? Then drain in a cheesecloth/colander?

Then I thought I might make some to eat fresh, and make another batch firmer by draining it for longer, form it into a roll and keep it at 10 C in a plastic box in my garage, for a month. 

What do you think?

I will need to check about the mastodon.

There are lots of different ways to grow, store and distribute cultures.  A "mesophilic" culture is just one or more strains of bacteria that can produce lactic acid in milk and work best at between room temperature and about 33C.  The very easiest way to get your hands on the Fred Flinstone variety of mesophilic cultures is to buy yogurt that uses mesophilic cultures (those from the region around the Caspian sea usually use mesophilic cultures).  You can also use cultured buttermilk or even cultured butter (which is what I've done in the past!)

However, there are lots and lots and lots of strains of bacteria that fall into the category of "mesophilic culture".  Some of them make good cheese.  Some of them do not.  Some of them are good for making the kind of cheese you want to make.  Some of them are good for making other kinds of cheese.  Because of this, people set up laboratories to isolate and grow specific cultures.  They give them stupid names like LB301 (which I made up, but probably exists somewhere) because otherwise it's hard to keep track of what you are doing.

The problem is that if you want a very pure culture with just one specific type of bacteria (or a mix of several specific bacteria) it's kind of hard.  I could ship you yogurt, but how do I make sure that other bacteria didn't get it?  Also, the yogurt will get contaminated with other bacteria if you open it up to the air, so how do you use only a little bit?  The problems go on and on.

Because of this, they devised methods of freeze drying the bacteria, or otherwise finding a way to distribute it in conveniently small packages that last for a long time and are hard to contaminate.  *Some* of these ways of distributing the bacteria work well for just adding it to milk exactly the way you want.  These are called DVI ("Direct Vat Innoculation") cultures.  The bacteria has been preserved in a way that they are still strong and after a 5-10 minute period in milk they will all wake up and get to work.  Others don't work like that.  Either the bacteria is sluggish, or it doesn't survive the freeze drying well.  In those cases, you have to add the bacteria to some milk and make your own yogurt with it.  This brings the bacteria back up both in numbers and in health so that when you add it to your milk it will work nicely.

So it seems that your culture is *not* a DVI culture which means that the health and number of bacteria in freeze dried (or potentially other) form is too poor to get up in running in a short time.  You have to give them time to recover their health by putting the bacteria in some milk and letting them breed up into a healthy population.

BTW, there is no need to make a 1 litre starter for a 1 litre cheese.  I tend to make 500ml starters for my 1 litre cheeses, but then I only put about 50ml of that into the milk when I'm making cheese.  I eat the rest of the yogurt (starter).  It's *really* delicious! (And if it isn't, then you don't want to be making cheese out of it!)

I hope that helps!

Superb! Thank you!

Quote from: mikekchar on November 23, 2018, 07:51:25 AM
There are lots of different ways to grow, store and distribute cultures.  A "mesophilic" culture is just one or more strains of bacteria that can produce lactic acid in milk and work best at between room temperature and about 33C.  The very easiest way to get your hands on the Fred Flinstone variety of mesophilic cultures is to buy yogurt that uses mesophilic cultures (those from the region around the Caspian sea usually use mesophilic cultures).  You can also use cultured buttermilk or even cultured butter (which is what I've done in the past!)

However, there are lots and lots and lots of strains of bacteria that fall into the category of "mesophilic culture".  Some of them make good cheese.  Some of them do not.  Some of them are good for making the kind of cheese you want to make.  Some of them are good for making other kinds of cheese.  Because of this, people set up laboratories to isolate and grow specific cultures.  They give them stupid names like LB301 (which I made up, but probably exists somewhere) because otherwise it's hard to keep track of what you are doing.

The problem is that if you want a very pure culture with just one specific type of bacteria (or a mix of several specific bacteria) it's kind of hard.  I could ship you yogurt, but how do I make sure that other bacteria didn't get it?  Also, the yogurt will get contaminated with other bacteria if you open it up to the air, so how do you use only a little bit?  The problems go on and on.

Because of this, they devised methods of freeze drying the bacteria, or otherwise finding a way to distribute it in conveniently small packages that last for a long time and are hard to contaminate.  *Some* of these ways of distributing the bacteria work well for just adding it to milk exactly the way you want.  These are called DVI ("Direct Vat Innoculation") cultures.  The bacteria has been preserved in a way that they are still strong and after a 5-10 minute period in milk they will all wake up and get to work.  Others don't work like that.  Either the bacteria is sluggish, or it doesn't survive the freeze drying well.  In those cases, you have to add the bacteria to some milk and make your own yogurt with it.  This brings the bacteria back up both in numbers and in health so that when you add it to your milk it will work nicely.

So it seems that your culture is *not* a DVI culture which means that the health and number of bacteria in freeze dried (or potentially other) form is too poor to get up in running in a short time.  You have to give them time to recover their health by putting the bacteria in some milk and letting them breed up into a healthy population.

BTW, there is no need to make a 1 litre starter for a 1 litre cheese.  I tend to make 500ml starters for my 1 litre cheeses, but then I only put about 50ml of that into the milk when I'm making cheese.  I eat the rest of the yogurt (starter).  It's *really* delicious! (And if it isn't, then you don't want to be making cheese out of it!)

I hope that helps!

Mike, your post are always informative and you usually are very good at boiling down rather complex processes into just the essential elements and putting them into easily understood terms and analogies, but this one is just superb.  Very well done.

Excellent first post, On Li, and welcome to the forum.  Maybe I'm the only one that picked up the humor but from now on I'm calling it "Mesolithic culture"     Misanthropic culture is something entirely different - a bacteria that hates humankind.  I try to keep them out of my cheese!

I find the word "mesophilic" to be entertaining by itself.  It means middle-loving.  I'm a mesophile myself, preferring my women neither too wide nor too narrow, my steaks neither too rare nor well done, and my kitchen somewhere between clean and total disaster.