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Oh, and you lost me with acidification... im guessing thats another thing i shuld be reading about...?

Hi Crystal,

Cheesemaking is all about acidification. Read my doco here to get an understanding of the acidification. Read the titles "Acidity Control Part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5"

Our kids are own their own now, but visit frequently enough with room mates in tow, and they love soft melty cheese. I make a butterkaese for them, into which I add sazon, a seasoning mix with salt, garlic, onion, spices, and annatto. I go for higher moisture content by cutting the curd a bit larger and a longer flocc multiplier, and it makes a good grilled cheese sandwich or nacho cheese, and they love it.
As for food economy, my best friends have been my slow cooker, my pressure canner, buying bulk, and exploring traditional cuisines of less affluent areas. Grains and legumes are great protein sources, and we really like Indian and Mexican food. I find that a lot of less expensive food is really great: the trade-off is the time you put in to make it, like a slow cooked pork shoulder, or a slow simmered bean soup. Curing your own meats is another way to lower costs and raise the quality; nothing like cottage bacon nicely smoked! Home made yogurt is great, too. Look on the forum for fromage blanc recipes, it's like cream cheese, and easy to make. I've made parfaits for the grandchildren with berries and fromage blanc or quark. I know you must have your hands full with such a nice large family; but from the other side of raising them, how fast the time flew! I sometimes long for all the noise and bustle! But a weekend with grandkids usually does it for me very well!

Thanks g, ill look at them tonight. Cheese seems to be getting more complicated by the minute tho... lol.

I do love having a big family and we all appreciate pitching in with the food. I have some two year olds in the kitchen making pizza scrolls for lunch now. As this in the first year of our veggies we havent had anything to can or bottle yet, but ive been hoarding jars for when the time comes, collecting recipes and learning what i can. We dont watch much tv, with 6 kids try finding a single show they will all watch..!?! So we get them in the garden weeding, watering, hlping with the pruning etc. They help with cakes, muffins, bread, butter, shake the yoghurt, watch the cheese. They help stir dinner, and anything else we can find for them to do! Its only work if your not doing it right! Id like them to have a better appreciation of the work that goes into food and learn how to do it themselves. So that they appreciate the way things used to be, before importing chinese junk and 24hour shops and internet. Lol, tho my kids have never been to the library as we ask for books for gifts. I also crochet and sew so i make lots of what they need. And they love that they get unique stuff that no one else has! My oldest son enjoys sewing, but not the technicalities of designing the pattern and the ordering of the process. DH has no interest in anything that takes longer than the.time it takes to order maccas at the drive thru window. But hes lived his entire life in the city.

Cheese can be very simple or very complicated. Making my cheese is simple. Making it taste the same all the time, a little more complicated. making some one else's cheese: complicated. It's all about familiarity. Start with a fairly simple cheese that you like, and make it a number of times. You'll get the feel of it, the language of curd and acidity, and you'll get good at it. And the next style you take on will be all the easier. It's not like working with static materials, like metal working which I did for years. It's working with living things. It's like gardening or farming, except that the season is measured in hours. It's a delight because you can make such wonderful stuff in cooperation with the little critters, and it's a delight because there is always something new to learn, some new direction in which to venture. Wish I'd found this when I was young; I could spend a long lifetime learning this.

Lol, i could talk about it forever dave! Ill keep at it with the cheese, i dont give up on anything, except growing cauliflowers, cos i had every infestation known to man in about 3 weeks, so i cut my losses and ripped them out!

I really dont need every cheese to be artisian quality, i just want it edible so it will be cheap milk except for gifts or special cheeses which ill get unhomoginised for. Ive had a quick look for dairies near me... nada... theres big commercial ones but no small ones ive found yet. Mybe ill just buy a goat but my backyards not big enough... oh, what the hell, ill just relocate out of sydney when i win the lotto and buy a small farm!

A woman I know who has one cow gave me 10 gallons of milk, and I made her five pounds of streaky bacon. We were both happy to have the gifts, and no laws were broken.

I saw some cows the other day, but i doubt anyone in this area will do anything for a trade. People here are too stuck up and everyone wants to be well paid for no effort! Except me that is. I want to put in the effort and get something of equal effort in return! I quite like the old money system of trading, i dont like money, i dont like the economy, i dont like the global everything we seem to have nowadays... i wish we could go back to the times when people were valued for what they can do, not for what they could buy! I can do lots of things, but they have no value here.

Quote from: dthelmers on December 07, 2011, 09:32:20 PM
I'm in full agreement with you on this. However, sometimes lately the $25 just isn't there. Sometimes the $10 just isn't there, and we just don't eat cheese that week, we make some delicious rice and  beans. I'm getting really good at that, and a lot of Indian vegetarian cooking. Probably a lot healthier without the meat, anyway. I started making things myself for the joy of it, and now I find that they were really great skills to acquire for lean times. I make the best cheese I can with the best milk I can afford at the time, so I go for the quicker ripening cheeses with the cheaper milk. Styles with longer pre-ripening times help the native lack of flavor of P/H milk, such as Lancaster or my fast ripening cheddar.
Hard times don't last forever, and then I'll be back to that wonderful raw Jersey milk! In the interim, I do the best I can.

Thanks Dave! I agree, though my personal preference is that if I only have $10 and not $25, I would prefer making a smaller cheese to a larger one of lesser quality. Again, that's a personal preference.

Crystal - wow what a story about growing up. Dreamy!  I hear that a lot about the milk in Australia -cows are well treated and have lots of natural resources. In the US it is very sad. Our supermarket milk is nowhere near the quality of Australian milk. That being said, the practices of homogenization and high temperature pasteurization still wreak havoc on the milk. For cottage and some fresh soft or spreadable cheeses you probably won't have many issues (except quality of curd set and a somewhat lower yield amount). The problem is more with aged cheeses or cheese that needs lots of fast enzymatic activity such as Mozzarella.

Dave and Crystal, There are two practices that both of you guys can use in combination to bring the milk back to better quality before making cheese.
The first one is called "standardizing the milk". The idea is that you can use less homogenized milk and even determine the fat content by mixing fat free milk with heavy cream.  You will need to calculate the quantities before mixing so that you won't end up with a triple cream cheddar (bad idea). I have to look at my lists but I think the ratio for a good tomme de savoie type cheese is 1 liter cream for every 8.5 liter nonfat milk. (or 1 qt cream for every 2¼ gal). Having the heavy cream mixed only roughly in the nonfat milk may create coagulation that is more like non-homogenized milk.  If you can combine non-homogenized cream with homogenized milk you may still stay in your budget and get that non-homogenized milk you wanted.
Sample Calculation:
1 Liter heavy cream (36% fat) = 360 ml fat
8.5 liter nonfat milk = 8500 ml

360 / 8500 = 0.042 - that's 4.2% fat milk.

The second practice is called pre-ripening. The idea is kind of like restoring back the bacterium and flora properties that lost to pasteurization -(without restoring back the pathogens of course).  All you need to do is simply get very fresh milk and dump some ripening bacteria (such as Flora Danica) into the jugs of cold milk. Refrigerate for 24 hours allowing the bacteria to start its magic. Make the cheese regularly the following day. Beware that the milk may be more acidic than usual so sometimes you will need to adjust your starter culture and pre-rennet time accordingly. No big deal (easy to figure out if you have a pH meter)

I have never tried it with homogenized milk but I bet it will greatly benefit these two treatments and will give you better yield and nicer cheese with deeper flavors and possibly a much improved texture.  Ever tried that?

Wow, i had never thought of that, mixing skim with cream, and it makes perfect sense! it would basically be the same molecule structure as Unhomoginised milk then! I will definatly give that a go, theres a costco near me that has cream rather cheap and you can get skim everywhere! all up it will work out cheaper than the organic unhomooginised brand we have here thats for sure!

OK, so i dont have a ph tester and am still reading up on the acidity. But, i do have a very old american house keeping book that has a few basic cheese recipes in it and they all say to let the milk 'clabber'. is that like ripening? But then i read somewhere to NEVER let the milk clabber as you will NEVER get a firm curd... so much conflicting information!

I will have a look at getting some Flora Danica i think...

I didn't know Costco has invaded Down Under.

It's not exactly the same structure because the cream itself is usually also homogenized (though it's easy to get only 1 Liter non-homogenized cream even if it costs a bit more, but keep the bulk quantity of material -the milk on the cheap milk. You will save a lot).  You can also experiment with butter products and double cream or clotted cream. You can also see if you can get goat's cream (goat's cream and milk are never homogenized. They are naturally homogenized coming out of the goat!).  Just remember to count the % of fat as I did in my sample calculation.

For the pre ripening method, you don't need to have a pH meter. Just dump 1/16th teaspoon for each gallon of milk 24 hours in advance. Wait 10 minutes to reconstitute, cover and shake. return to fridge for 24 hours.  Then make your cheese regularly and see what happens. You don't have to use Flora Danica. It's just a good multi strain mixture that wakes up many flavors in the milk. MA4000 series or MM100 series can work well too. See how it works and adjust it in the future to find the best culture type and quantity and to find the best pre-rennet time change you need to make (if any). Make a log of what you have done and when it's time to eat it follow up on the forum and we will see how to adjust and improve it for your next batch.

Whatever you do - don't let the milk clabber!

hmm, I did know that about goats milk being naturally homoginised, i have no idea where i learned that little fact tho.

Yes, the skim/cream will not be quite right but its got to be a lot better than the P&H milk yes?

Yes, we have our first costco here in Sydney, it opened earlier this year and no one was too happy, except me. I only went for the first time last week but will be going back. Although a LOT of the stuff there is the most expensive brands we have here, just in bulk with a little discount. But, we have a supermarket here called Aldi, and they are way cheaper than anywhere else. Big supermarkets own brands cant even compete, and costco cant either. Except the milk is a little cheaper, and a few other things.

I doubt ill find goat's milk anywhere, the organic supermarket chain we had here went under last year...

I promise not to let the milk clabber! I will get organised and start to write out notes when i do my next cheese, i always take pictures anyway

To Iratherfly: That's a great idea adding cream to non-fat milk. I had forgotten that I had tried this with non-fat dry milk, and got a great curd. My cheddar recipe ripens the milk with MM100 or flora Danica for 3 hours at 76°f before renneting, and it develops a lot of flavor. I'll try your method, it makes a lot of sense.

To Crystal: I buy my milk from Aldi's. I didn't know they were that widespread. I thought that they were local to the north east of the USA. The milk I get from my local Aldi's is from Illinois, and is pasteurized gently and will set a firm curd without calcium chloride. Pretty good milk, all in all, and it seems to be from pastured cows as the color changes with the summer milk. Older recipe books may be assuming unpasteurized milk, so the clabbering would be OK, but P/H milk doesn't clabber, it spoils. The lactic bacteria we want in cheese is killed, but the enzymes that cause the fats to break down into short chain fatty acids are still there, so instead of forming something that looks like yogurt it forms something that looks and smells like vomit.
I'll send you a recipe that I have been using to get more flavor from store bought milk, and it ripens quite fast, like Caerphilly. A pH meter is a pretty handy tool for shortening your learning curve; I know another member here uses pH strips that measure to .5 instead of whole numbers, and that may be somewhat helpful.

Aldis!  I would have never thought to go there for good milk.

Yep, aldi is here and i love it! Everything is cheaper there. But we dont have good milk anyehere, its all the same! So ill be doing a batch of skim/cream and using your recipe and will see how it goes!