New to cheesemaking, may have messed up ingredients

[Possum-Pie]

A pH meter is very helpful, but it's also a gigantic pain to clean and keep calibrated

Aint that the truth.  I use one because I choose to - but it can be a pain in the butt. 

I'm the medical field and use data and science every day I got to work.  I think that's why i like cheesemaking - it gives me some science and a little bit of control in a hobby that ultimately tastes good (most of the time).  On the other hand, the amount of variables for the home cheesemaker to attempt to control is fairly high and that can lead to some unexpected results - i enjoy that as well!

Trent

EXACTLY!  I have a doctorate in nursing practice and took many courses in statistics, tests/measures, etc. I am obsessed with the evidence behind why we do what we do in life, but I also realize that there is an "art" in most things where exact measures just don't come into it.  I bought a pH meter b/c the scientist in me insisted, then realized that while it is accurate, it is not "precise" This means that distilled water which should always be 7.00 pH comes up 6.95, 6.78, 7.20...etc. that variability drove me nuts. Sure, the "average" was 7.0, but I packed the meter away b/c it wasn't precise. My digital scale will give me 5.67 grams EVERY time I measure a U.S. quarter. The precision is perfect. I'm focusing less on pH and more on other things. My first cheese turned out great, the Romano seems to be doing well. Sure, my cheese fridge is not exactly 50 f, but 49 degrees f seems to work as well.

[Aris]

pH plays a big role in cheesemaking and it greatly influence texture, taste and flavor even appearance. The good thing is, you don't need a pH meter or pH strip to reliably track acidity/pH. That is where the "art" comes into play. I rely on my experience and senses to track acidity/pH. Jim Wallace of cheesemaking.com actually has a cheese pH guide where he relies on taste to determine pH. I actually bought a food pH meter out of curiosity and for confirmation. I no longer use it because I already know how to make cheese without a pH meter and calibrating it is such a hassle.

[Possum-Pie]

Switching topics for a moment, I made pepper jack cheese yesterday. My first try at a mesophilic culture, and my first cheese with anything added in to the curds. I was afraid of making it "too spicy" so I soaked 2 dried jalapeno peppers in boiling water and got about 30mls of intense hot juice. I then cut up 3 banana peppers (without pith or seeds) so that they would be mild. After draining the whey, I combined the spicy juice and the chopped peppers into the curds and began pressing. The first thing that I noticed was that eating a bit that crumbled off when I turned it, it was bland. No hotness at all. Also, the cheese is much larger than I anticipated since I used whole milk, so the pepper chunks are sparse.

Here is the question: It has been pressing at 45 lbs overnight, and is fairly solid. What would happen if I broke it up, put more peppers in, and then re-pressed it? I worry that it would never come back together as a whole cheese. There must be a chemical reaction that happens to turn a bunch of curds into a solid block, how quickly does that occur?

UPDATE: I decided that breaking/reheating/repressing doesn't seem like a good idea. I am going to compromise and reheat some jalapeno peppers with seeds (to give hotness) and after I cool it, strain the liquid slowly over the partially pressed wheel. Hopefully, some of the flavor will seep into the wheel. After an hour or so, I will continue pressing.

[Aris]

Jalapeno has low scoville unit and the hot juice likely didn't get absorbed by the curds and got washed away with the whey. I prefer to use dried habanero or dried siling labuyo (filipino chili) because they are really spicy. Typical Pepper Jack recipes from what I've noticed is prone to over acidification which results in a sour and very crumbly cheese. Breaking/Reheating/Repressing can make it even worse. I prefer my Pepper Jack to have a pH of 5.3 so it will be elastic and creamy. I don't press mine but it still consolidate just fine. If the curds have a high pH (over 6), they will consolidate just fine and form into a solid block without any weight. Frequent flipping of the cheese also helps a lot. I used that to my advantage to make semi hard/hard cheeses without any pressing. It typically takes 2-3 hours for my unpressed semi hard/hard cheese to consolidate properly. It hardens after salting and being stored at 45-50 f. Cheddar curds typically has a pH of 5.4-5.5 so it doesn't knit that well and needs to be pressed. Then again I can still make an unpressed cheddar.

[DrChile]

agree with Aris here - i tend to use dried chiles in my cheeses.
Fresh chiles can carry the risk of contamination (albeit low if you boil them) and I like the added punch of a dehydrated chile.
I'm growing ghost pepper and carolina reapers (and some habs) and have dried most of them and plan to add them to a jack cheese in the next few weeks so it'll be ready by the holidays... 
Some of my dried peppers are red and i just recently dried some green ghosts/reapers - think I might call the cheese "Ho Ho Holy s*** that's hot jack cheese"


Thanks also to Aris about the recs regarding pressing (in other posts as well)... so many misconceptions about pressing and its a good reminder that it really depends on the cheese you're making



Trent

[MacGruff]

PossumPie raised an interesting question though, that I did not see addressed: How much chile do you add per pound (or Kg) of cheese?

I've been contemplating making a hot cheese, since I have a couple of Jalapeno plants that have produced some pretty spicy peppers (stress them a bit as they ripen to a red color). I've been making my own Sriracha from them, but was wanting to use them in a cheese...

[Possum-Pie]

PossumPie raised an interesting question though, that I did not see addressed: How much chile do you add per pound (or Kg) of cheese?

I've been contemplating making a hot cheese, since I have a couple of Jalapeno plants that have produced some pretty spicy peppers (stress them a bit as they ripen to a red color). I've been making my own Sriracha from them, but was wanting to use them in a cheese...

I watched a Gavin Webber video where he made pepper jack. He merrily put 2 TBS of dried peppers in, pepper-infused oil on the outside, and chipotle rub. Months later when he tasted it, his eyes were watering and he had to drink milk just to calm his mouth. I've watched other YouTubers spooning in 9 tsp of dried chili peppers and thought that was too much.  It all depends on how hot you want it I guess, but The cheese I'm making is for my 80-year-old mother who loves store-bought pepper jack. There is almost no kick to that, but she enjoys the pepper flavor a little spiciness.  I really struggled with how much to put in. My dried jalapenos are VERY hot if the seeds are included, so I went very conservative.  When we taste it around Christmas, I'll find out how much more to add next time.

[Aris]

Boiling the chilis for several minutes is a vital step to sanitize them because they can cause contamination if you don't boil them. Boling them also reduce their spiciness significantly in my experience so I chose a chili that is really spicy like dried habanero. There will still be some trial and error to get the right hotness for your pepper jack.

[Possum-Pie]

UPDATE:
So After 6 weeks, I had to test the Pepper Jack to see how it was.  Incredible flavor, but NOT pepper jack.  I'd call it "pepper sharp cheddar" I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the cheese is fantastic, smoked flavor, just enough heat, but 1. VERY sharp (not necessarily a bad thing- just not Jack) and sort of crumbly like a very compressed fetta. I put the correct pressure on my press, but it is hole-filled inside and when cut, breaks along curd lines instead of straight. As I said, I think it has a great flavor, just nothing like pepper Jack flavor/texture...I now own a pH meter and can accurately measure acidity, but too late for this cheese. Seems the major concern is texture...Any suggestions?

[mikekchar]

Sounds like you make have salted it *just* a bit late.  I'm trying to remember how Jack is made, though...  It shouldn't require very much pressure because it used to be made by putting it in cheese cloth and then twisting it to "press" it.  There would be a kind of "belly button" hole where the knot of the cloth was (you basically make a Stilton knot, cinch it up and then finally twist it to get enough pressure).  So the pH should relatively high when you do that.  I *think* that means that you don't cheddar it very much.  Also (and I need to review how Jack is made, like I said...) I seem to remember that like Colby, you do a curd wash but unlike Colby I seem to remember it's a "same temperature wash".  So that should remove some lactose and slow down the culture a bit.

So, anyway, I think probably technique is likely to blame.  You may have been using more of a cheddar technique than a Jack.  I seem to remember that the vast majority of Jack recipes on the internet are not actually Jack.  However, it's not a specialty of mine and I don't actually remember :-)

[Aris]

Possum-pie,
What recipe did you use and did you salt the curd? You need to stop pressing when the cheese has a pH of 5.3-5.4 and put it in the fridge or your cheese cave to arrest pH drop. Air dry it in your cheese cave because your room temperature might be too warm which might make the cheese over acidify.

Mike,
In NEC's Pepper Jack recipe, the curds are salted directly like cheddar. The cheese continues to acidify in the press even when salted and has the potential to over acidify when left at room temperature for too long. There are a few people in this forum that had issues with salted curd cheese like Pepper Jack. Even in Learn to the make cheese that cheese is problematic. My Pepper Jack inspired cheese was unpressed, dry salted at 5.3-5.4 and stored in the fridge to halt pH drop. It had a pliable and creamy texture.

[MacGruff]

I've got a Pepper Jack that is aging right now - it's about three weeks old and I will let it go for another week or so before tasting it.

Mikechar's memory is correct about the non-pressing and the Stilton knot. I am following the recipe / technique from Caldwell's book. I did a regular Monterey Jack cheese a couple of months ago which came out nicely, so this second make added a few Jalapenos that I grew to make a small (one pound) wheel of pepper jack.

Once we taste it, I will try to remember to take pictures and post it here.

For now, it appears to be developing very nicely.

[Possum-Pie]

Sorry it took so long to respond, I'm not getting notified when a reply to a thread I'm in is posted.

Ok, I'll post the recipe in a bit, I have to look up what I did. I used mesophilic cultures, I used dried peppers from my garden and reconstituted them in boiling water to kill pathogens,  I did NOT press with a cheesecloth (ie provolone) but with my press. I have a digital pH meter but it is only useful with liquids, not curd. Up till now, I've never bothered with pH, geez they were making cheese long before anyone knew what acid/alkaline was- but I will try to be more scientific from now on. I saw a Gavin Webber Curd Nerd "fail" where he didn't get the pH right on a provolone ball and so it IS important.
As I said, it is a great flavor, more cheddar than Monterey jack, but this is the first cheese I've made that pressing and curing left it with a crumbly texture. Maybe the heat wasn't high enough to melt the curds together?  After pressing I rubbed it down with olive oil, put smoked paprika over the surface, and put it in my cold smoker for a few hours. I vacuum-packed it and as I mentioned, tasted a bit a few weeks early.  It is spot-on flavor-wise, but is definitely sharper than I anticipated.

[mikekchar]

Up till now, I've never bothered with pH, geez they were making cheese long before anyone knew what acid/alkaline was- but I will try to be more scientific from now on.

I think almost everyone makes this mistake at the beginning    It's a real shame that the attachments are gone here because there used to be a really good archive of PDFs of old cheesemaking bookings here.  A lot of them were from the 1800s, where just as you say, they didn't understand anything about pH.  And the thing is... Wow.  They were *clueless*.  There is absolutely no way the people writing these books made good cheese.

However, that's not to say there wasn't good cheese at that time.  It has to be said that most of these books were written by men *who didn't make cheese*.  Women made cheese and men owned companies that employed the women who were making cheese.  Then these men wrote books about making cheese... and... it's pretty clear they didn't understand it.  I remember reading one where the author was a pains to point out that his absolutely ridiculous ideas were ignored by the women he was instructing 

Controlling acidity really is the secret to making good cheese, IMHO.  However, it's important to realise that we're doing it for a *purpose*.  You can say:

• Start at a pH of 6.7.  Add culture.
• Wait for a 0.15 drop in the pH
• Drain at a pH of 6.1
• Press until a pH of 5.3.  Then salt.

And that will help your cheese a lot.  However, what are you actually doing?  What are those pH markers for?

• 6.7 is the typical pH of milk.  If it's much higher than that, then there is a good chance that the milk is from an unhealthy cow and you may have problems.  If it's much lower than that, then the milk is probably old and has soured.  If it's pasteurised milk, then it's doubly concerning because it should have been pasteurised before it could sour.  So you should avoid that milk.
• You need to let the culture "wake up" and get started, so you need to wait until you see a drop in the pH to know that the culture is working.  However, even if you add an active mother culture (which doesn't need to "wake up"), there is an amount of calcium phosphate dissolved in the milk.  This will "buffer" the drop in pH (just like adding vinegar to baking powder neutralises the acid).  So we need to wait until the buffer has been used up so that we get a consistent drop in acidity over time
• You can "measure" your pH by keeping track of how fast your curds flocculate. The lower the pH, the faster the curds will form (at the same temperature and rennet amount).  By doing something like a flocculation test, you can infer how fast the pH is dropping and adjust your timing accordingly
• You want to time the acidity targets to the curd texture targets so that you hit both at drain time.  You can't easily infer the pH by looking at the curds, but a pH of 6.0 or 6.1 is where you get ideal yield from ricotta.  *After the fact* you can make ricotta from your whey and if it works out well, then you know you hit a pH of between 6.0 and 6.1.  If your drain target was over 6.1, then you'll want to let the whey sit for a while.  If the pH is too low, then the ricotta will form *at temperatures below 85 C*.  You can also tell because the ricotta won't float to the surface.  This means that you can get a good idea of your drain pH.  The next time you make cheese you can adjust your timing.
• With practice, once the pH gets down to 5.5 or lower, you can *taste* the acidity (or at least the lack of sweetness) in the whey.  If you make cheese a lot, you can tell with pretty good precision and accuracy where you are.  There are other tests too.  As the curds get more acidic, they don't knit as easily.  You can literally see the difference in how the cheese is knitting.  The texture changes too.  It goes from soft and pliable to hard and crumbly as it gets more acidic.  You can also do a stretch test if you are aiming for a pH between 5.1 and 5.3.  Heated cheese curds will stretch easily in that range and won't otherwise.

This is just a small sample of the kinds of things that you can do to control your process without actually knowing the pH.  Traditionally, this is what good cheesemakers did.  They didn't know about acidity or alkalinity, but they obviously could tell that the whey got more acidic over time.  They could also see the differences in textures of the curd.  Over the centuries they learned good techniques and an procedures.  Cheesemakers apprenticed for years and years and years, learning from master cheese makers.  It was always an atelier system.

I think the biggest mistake people make is that they think "Historically they didn't know about this, so it must not be important".  In reality, they spend hundreds and thousands of years learning good techniques through trial and error and they each person spent decades learning from the people who came before them.  It's basically ridiculous to think that we can throw away all of that knowledge, start from scratch and expect good results.  Cheesemaking is deep.

The last thing I would like to say in this rant is that we have this weird idea that there is a kind of partition around the 1900's where we went from being ignorant trolls to being scientific masters.  All of the knowledge and ideas that we have were incremental.  Between 1800 and 1900, cheeses changed as people learned things.  There were lots of new cheeses and new ideas and new approaches based on things that we learned.  The same thing happened between 1700 and 1800, 1600 and 1700, or any 2 points in time you want to pick.

Throwing out the great new techniques we picked up between 1900 and 2000 is... um... arrogant is the best way I can put it.  We obviously knew things got acidic over time.  We could taste it.  We could see the result (even if we didn't quite understand that it was acid that was causing it).  We have better ways of quantifying that change, better ways of modelling it, better ways of imagining how to improve our process because we understand it.  Not making that knowledge available is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

For me, the key to understanding why it's important is that understanding our modern model allows you to avoid the decades of having to be an apprentice in order to make good cheese.  Unlike people from hundreds of years ago, you can learn to make good cheese *on your own* without some master having to teach the hundreds of weird measuring and evaluation techniques that they used.  I'm absolutely not against learning those old techniques (they are awesome and I spend a lot of time trying to learn them).  However, deciding that you are both going to ignore modern understanding of cheese making *and* you're going to go blindly in without knowing all the techniques built up over the centuries (and which take many years to master) means that you will just make bad cheese.  Just like those men who owned cheese factories and wrote books on their weird ideas of how cheese should be made.

[Aris]

Sorry it took so long to respond, I'm not getting notified when a reply to a thread I'm in is posted.

Ok, I'll post the recipe in a bit, I have to look up what I did. I used mesophilic cultures, I used dried peppers from my garden and reconstituted them in boiling water to kill pathogens,  I did NOT press with a cheesecloth (ie provolone) but with my press. I have a digital pH meter but it is only useful with liquids, not curd. Up till now, I've never bothered with pH, geez they were making cheese long before anyone knew what acid/alkaline was- but I will try to be more scientific from now on. I saw a Gavin Webber Curd Nerd "fail" where he didn't get the pH right on a provolone ball and so it IS important.
As I said, it is a great flavor, more cheddar than Monterey jack, but this is the first cheese I've made that pressing and curing left it with a crumbly texture. Maybe the heat wasn't high enough to melt the curds together?  After pressing I rubbed it down with olive oil, put smoked paprika over the surface, and put it in my cold smoker for a few hours. I vacuum-packed it and as I mentioned, tasted a bit a few weeks early.  It is spot-on flavor-wise, but is definitely sharper than I anticipated.

Yeah they were making cheese long before anyone knew what acid/alkaline was. They also didn't use lab grown commercial cheese culture which from my observation are too aggressive in producing lactic acid and the lactic acid they produce is harsher than my natural wild starter cultures. I measure acidity by using my senses and intuition, it doesn't get any easier than that. I used to do a stretch test by reserving a small piece of curd or cutting a small piece from the cheese and heat it in almost boiling water. If it stretch 2-3x its size, pH is 5.3-5.4. I stopped doing it because smelling and tasting the whey/cheese/curd is good enough. Coincidentally, British cheesemakers in the early 1900's do a hot iron test when testing for acidity. This quote was taken from an old book "The hot iron test is the best for discovering the first sign of acidity. Take a piece of piping or a piece of iron a couple of feetlong, heat it hot, but not enough to scorch the curd. Take a handful of curd from your vat, squeezing out the whey, press it against the iron, and if it adheres to it and on removing strings out in fine threads like hairs, the acid is developed and all whey should be removed" Anyway, you don't really need a pH meter/strips. You just need to be aware and observant of what happens during a make. Practice tracking acidity by taste and smell, I posted a cheese pH guide from Jim Wallace of cheesemaking.com on top.

Mike,
Well said! That was a good read.