Another Gouda in the press!

[scasnerkay]

The pH started a bit higher than expected, and the rennet took longer than planned. But the make was fairly on target by the drain and pressing stages.
About 4.5 gallons, and 5.75# cheese!

[Susan38]

So you are getting consistently higher yields than "normal"...what is that Jersey cow eating to produce such a high yielding cheese?

[scasnerkay]

These girls are fed nothing special: alfalfa, forage hay, and and oat/corn/barley mix during milking.
My impression is just high solids in the milk!

[mikekchar]

Jersey milk is usually around 5% or higher fat content.  Standardized milk is only 3.6%.  It may not seem like a big difference, but at 10% yield, you end up multiplying by 10.  So there is 1.4% difference in fat content (by weight).  If a gallon of milk weighs 10 lbs, then the extra fat will weigh 0.14 lbs (about 1/7th of a lb -- about 2.3 oz).  If we assume that pretty much all of that ends up in the finished cheese, your 1 lb cheese becomes 1 lb 2.3 oz.  This means that a 4.5 lb cheese will end up at just over 5.1 lbs.  And to be honest, 5% is conservative for Jersey milk.  It also tends to have higher protein content as well, to similar effect.

I can buy Jersey milk in 900 ml bottles and it gives me quite a bit more cheese than 1 liter of standardised milk.

P.S.  Never again will I attempt math with US units.  Please join us in the metric world! :-D

[Susan38]

These girls are fed nothing special: alfalfa, forage hay, and and oat/corn/barley mix during milking.

I think feed type and quality has a huge influence on cheese yield.  For awhile I had access to Jersey fed similar to yours, and the milk had way-high amount of cream and solids, etc.  More recently it was Jersey fed mostly alfalfa and forage (sometimes not dairy quality) with very little grain, and the milk had less (and thinner) cream (and resulting cheese yield was less).  The theory behind this type of feed plan is supposedly the "grass-fed milk" has more Omega-3 fatty acids in it and thus is healthier.  When the alfalfa/forage was dairy quality the cream was abundant enough for good cheese yield, but it was amazing how fast the cream decreased with poorer forage quality (like, within a few days).

Congratulations on getting yet another (big) cheese into your cave!