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I am planning on making a colby tomorrow morning using the Cheeseforum recipe.  I just occured to me, this is a 1 gallon recipe, and calls for 15 g salt when salting the curds.....

I should be tripling this amount, shouldn't I?  Maybe that's what went wrong with my last one....

I have seen salting percentages for cheddar, but not for colby.

You don't say how much you are multiplying your recipe - I'm assuming a three gallon batch, as you talk about tripling your salt.

I go by flavor when I salt my curds, as I variably use kosher or canning salt, according to which I have on hand.  So I'm not much help there. But I like the curds to taste slightly more salty than I want the eventual cheese to be, knowing that some of the salt will wash away with the whey during pressing.

Thank you Karen....Since Colby is a washed curd, I guess the salt is not so much to stop acid development as it is to flavor and retard mold....

Thanks again, Karen!

The salt is definitely to put the brakes on acid production, even with a washed curd cheese. If it were just for flavoring, you could accomplish that with brine. There is no worry about mold inside the cheese. Not enough oxygen.

I prefer less salt in things in general.  I know salt in cheese-making has a prupose besides flavor as just mentioned, but can it be reduced in recipes somewhat and still work well?

In Stilton for example, I've seen a range of salt amounts given in recipes here from 3 to 5T for a 5 gallon batch. Can this be further reduced without negatively influencing the final cheese? I'm not suggesting no salt of course, just a further reduction.

Thanks.

I've never made Stilton, but 3 to 5 tablespoons of salt for a 5 gallon batch sounds like a very slight amount of salt.  Much of that would come out with the whey, too.  You could try reducing it, but I wouldn't have much hope of a good end result for the cheese.

You should not reduce the salt called for with a Stilton or other Blue. The salt helps setup the proper growing environment for the blue mold.

Quote from: MrsKK on May 16, 2010, 01:08:11 PM
I've never made Stilton, but 3 to 5 tablespoons of salt for a 5 gallon batch sounds like a very slight amount of salt.  Much of that would come out with the whey, too.  You could try reducing it, but I wouldn't have much hope of a good end result for the cheese.

Almost all of the recipes I've read for Stilton call for 1T for each gallon. In another thread on Stiltons, Mark said in his just made Stilton he used 5 T for 5 gallons, and Sailor said that might be too much, and that he used 3T salt for that same amount of milk. That's where the 3 to 5 T numbers have come from. So not liking strong salt taste, the lesser amount is what I used in my first batch.   (The salt is added after the curds are lightly pressed and milled, so not as much would be lost with the whey.)

If the blues need salt for the mold to develop nicely, then that's that. I did purchase a small slice of wonderful Spanish blue that was so salty it nearly ripped my tongue out. A lovely STilton purchased at the same time contained so much less salt and was by far much better to me, so there is a range of acceptable salt - I just want to use the lower amount.   

But in other non-blue cheeses can the amount of salt be slightly reduced without ruining quality? There seems to be a wide range of salt that recipes call for, and sometimes people copy/follow recipes simply because that's how it's always been done. Sometimes that's for essential reasons, but sometmes it's just because that's how it's always been done. Since cheese-making is an ancient science, I'm wondering if modern refrigeration has made as high levels of salt (more than would be needed to stop bacterial action or encourage mold) less necessary?

I find 3T is perfect for a 5 gallon Stilton. Every type of cheese is different and has it's own requirements. I have yet to make a cheese that was too salty.