# Cheesemakers!



## Jericurl

I just watched a youtube video....
guy takes 1 gallon of goat milk, 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar....15 minutes later he has a soft cheese that he seasons with dried herbs.

What does this kind of cheese taste like? Like a mild feta?
Or chevre?

I've been wanting to make cheese for the longest time but thought I would have to get a press and some rennet, etc.

But this! This is totally doable.

And now I plot...


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## Boatboy24

Mozzarella 'kits' are easily obtained. Check out our sponsor, Brew and Wine Supply.

PS: Every time I hear the word 'Cheesemakers', I get a chuckle, thinking of Monty Python's 'Life of Brian'. 

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xLUEMj6cwA[/ame]


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## Jericurl

LOL....We say, "What did the Romans ever do for us?!" all the time.

eta:
And yes, once it gets a bit cooler I will definitely be looking into getting some cultures, etc.


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## ibglowin

I soooooo wanted to make Cheve. Bought a cheese making kit and all the right stuff, then found out what it would cost for a gallon of Goats milk from the local coop. Just shook my head as it would cost me $20 to make an 8oz log of Cheve.

I got to Costco and pick up 2 8oz logs of Kirkland Signature Cheve for like $6.95......


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## ceeaton

I think it is worth doing at least once, even at $20 for 8 oz. I just enjoy taking things to work and saying I made them. I use all of my cell mates as guinea pigs when it comes to making a recipe the first time. I'd also like to "cut the cheese" at work and have it edible and not offensive.


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## grapeman

With a bit of rennet you can make a farmer's cheese out of pasteurized cows milk even. It is a little milder than goat cheese. A gallon will yield a fair amount at around a quart or so. You can mix in your favorite herbs with it or even make a spicy blend and it is delicious. Not much is needed to do it. Get some cheesecloth and unless you want to make a hard cheese not much else is needed. You can buy an inexpensive kit with a the little stuff like a special knife for cutting the curd, cheesecloth etc for a small amount.


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## BernardSmith

I started making cheese a few months ago and I think that it is fun ... and relatively, easy, though mozzarella is not so easy... If your milk source pasteurizes the milk at too high a temperature you will find it very difficult to obtain stretchy cheese. If the milk is OK then you want the cheese to have a pH of about 5.2 and you want to heat the cheese so that it will be at around 170 - 180 F 
I use kefir made from kefir grains as my culture (it contains both mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria and yeast) and according to Asher also contains bacteria you need for many surface cultures. 
Making a press is easy - a very simple press can be made from two 2 gallon fermenting buckets. You drill a few holes in the second bucket and place the form or mold between the upper and lower bucket. A gallon of whey or water weighs 8 lbs - so you can fill the top bucket for a weight of 16 lbs. If you place a tray atop the bucket you can place a 3 , 5 or 6 gallon carboy on top of the tray and so press the cheese with up to 48 lbs. A more stable press can be made from two pieces of wood (about 24 inches by 6) drilled to accept 4 threaded rods (about 12 - 18 inches) and you then place appropriate carboys on top of the top strip of wood

Best books? David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. Gianaclis Caldwell's Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking. Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making is very popular but IMO it is more focused on recipes rather than principles and there seems to be many very different recipes for every cheese so what you want to get a handle on is what undergirds the recipe rather than a specific recipe (how important are the specific weights for the times listed? How important are the temperatures listed for cooking the curds? How important are the size of the curds you cut for the kind of cheese you are making? How significant is the mix of curd size, temperature, cooking time, and weights?)
One gallon of milk makes about 1 lb of cheese.


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## Mismost

grapeman said:


> With a bit of rennet you can make a farmer's cheese out of pasteurized cows milk even. It is a little milder than goat cheese. A gallon will yield a fair amount at around a quart or so. You can mix in your favorite herbs with it or even make a spicy blend and it is delicious. Not much is needed to do it. Get some cheesecloth and unless you want to make a hard cheese not much else is needed. You can buy an inexpensive kit with a the little stuff like a special knife for cutting the curd, cheesecloth etc for a small amount.



visited a church lady friend one day as she made a batch of cheese...heated milk...stirred in some stuff...it got lumpy...she poured into cheesecloth...hung from a cabinet door knob and over her sink. It make a real nice soft cheese. she saved the whey for other uses, what I don't know.

I have been wanting to give it a try ever since! My Stepmother used to make goat milk riccota cheese and then made manicotti and is still the best I have ever eaten...she said that was a pretty easy and fast cheese to make.


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## BernardSmith

You can use some of the the whey to inoculate your next batch of cheese (that was a traditional way of making cheese and is known as back slopping) or you can drink the whey or use it for bread making or to feed vegetables in your garden. You can also use whey to make ricotta.


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## cintipam

Bernard, thank you for your excellent evaluation of cheesemaking books. I have been looking for a while for the "right" cheese books to buy, and you made it all clear to me. I don't want or need recipes, those are easy to find with websearches. It's the why and how of the process that I want to learn so I can understand then create.

BTW whey is excellent on tomato plants. The extra calcium prevents those soft brown to black bad spots that tastes so bad if you bite into them.

Pam in cinti


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## Mismost

Jericurl said:


> I just watched a youtube video....
> guy takes 1 gallon of goat milk, 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar....15 minutes later he has a soft cheese that he seasons with dried herbs.
> 
> What does this kind of cheese taste like? Like a mild feta?
> Or chevre?
> 
> I've been wanting to make cheese for the longest time but thought I would have to get a press and some rennet, etc.
> 
> But this! This is totally doable.
> 
> And now I plot...



Well?? Inquiring minds want to know...did you make cheese and was it any good?

I've been prowling the web looking for a cheesemaking forum...they all seem to be pretty dead. You know of an active one?


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## Jericurl

Mismost said:


> Well?? Inquiring minds want to know...did you make cheese and was it any good?
> 
> I've been prowling the web looking for a cheesemaking forum...they all seem to be pretty dead. You know of an active one?



No and no.

I went all over town and I'm unable to find any unpasteurized milk. I'm part of a backyard farmer's group on FB and they do have a milk run that they do every couple of months where I could get some. But I forgot about the last one and a couple of them ended up getting cancelled. I may end up just needing to buy some rennet and try @grapeman suggestion. 

As far as forums go, I think proper forums are pretty much a bust. There are several FB groups for cheesemaking that are quite active.


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## BernardSmith

You can in fact use pasteurized milk. The milk you cannot use is milk that has been ultrapasteurized (and that applies to most organic "brands"). Just get the freshest milk you can find. I have been making cheese for a few months now and while I can get raw cows' milk and raw goats' milk I often simply go to my local supermarket and pick up a gallon of whole milk. I use kefir as my culture (I make my own from kefir grains) and it contains both the low temperature cultures and the high temperature cultures and lots of other bacteria which SHOULD enable me to make brie or camembert like cheeses (I am in the process of making a cheese called a marcellin - in another month or so it should have a soft and runny paste but a firm rind). Feta style cheeses are easy to make. You do need rennet and you will generally make about 1 lb of hard cheese from every gallon of milk. But you will have about 5 or more pints of whey and you can use the whey in hundreds of ways from making bread to making pickles to giving to cats or using as a fertilizer in your garden (good for tomatoes). The secret is to get hold of a cheese making book.


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## Jericurl

BernardSmith said:


> The secret is to get hold of a cheese making book.



Any suggestions?


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## BernardSmith

I have four. The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, by David Asher. He is the Sandor Ellix Katz of cheesemaking, using kefir to culture all his cheeses rather than lab made freeze dried cultures. He also de-emphasizes the need for a white coat approach to cheese making (unless of course you are selling the cheese and so need to meet state and other laws);
Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. Her approach is does not emphasize the science and is often a first book to read. 
Mastering Artisan Cheese Making by Gianaclis Caldwell. She understands the science and explains it well. So you get an idea of the importance of monitoring pH at different points in the process - Mozzarella , for example will not stretch unless the pH of the curds when you heat them is about 5.2 - 5.4 so simply adding specific quantities of vinegar or acetic acid without knowing how this is affecting pH will create a failed batch - but you can also add cultures that will drop the pH AND add more flavor... 
200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes, by Debra Amrein-Boyes. Her book covers recipes that look exciting to make and I think that Gavin Webber (Youtube) uses her recipes without attribution. Her recipes emphasize that you might use cows' milk if you don't have sheep's milk or goats when traditional recipes call for more "exotic" sources of milk..
One other point: to make hard cheese you do need a press but a press is really quite easy to make. Basically all you need are two pieces of food safe wood (or plastic) - perhaps cutting boards - and a way to stabilize the top board* when you sit it above a form (where the cheese sits when you press it. A one gallon carboy, filled weighs 8 lbs, and a 3 gallon carboy weighs 24. A pint of milk weighs 1 lb... so you have weights. I often use small paving bricks - about 20 lbs each.
* I drilled four holes in the boards - one at each corner and ran threaded rods through the holes fixing the rods with washers and nuts. To buy a press costs more than $100... to make one costs about $10


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## Jericurl

I have an opportunity to buy raw milk and raw cream at the end of the week!

How much should I get and what should I make?!


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## BernardSmith

Jericurl said:


> I have an opportunity to buy raw milk and raw cream at the end of the week!
> 
> How much should I get and what should I make?!



That's a bit like saying I have two weeks off from work: where should I go? 
I would suggest that you get a gallon of milk (if you can) but 3 liters is OK too. Never tried anything with cream. What might you make? That's a tough question. 

If you don't have a press or a form you may want to stick with fresh cheese(cottage cheese, for example or ricotta ) . If you have forms and a press then you could aim for something like a Feta cheese. Although it is traditionally made with sheep's milk you can make it with cows' milk and while the addition of an enzyme called Lipase may enhance the flavor similar cheeses from the middle east are often made without added Lipase and they taste better than OK. Another cheese you might try is Halloumi. Neither of these cheeses require a lengthy aging process. If you don't have any of the "classic" cheese making books you might check out Gavin Webber (note the spelling) cheese making videos on Youtube. He's good and seeing what the curds should look like can be very helpful, in my opinion. 

But four points: One of the secrets of cheesemaking is to bring the temperature of the cheese up very, very slowly. The most simple method for doing that is to always use a double boiler: that is a smaller pot that is heated using the water held in a larger pot. And the secret to this is to keep the bath about 10 degrees hotter than your target temperature for the milk. Milk is very massy and does not quickly lose temperature once you have heated it to the desired temperature. What I would recommend is that you boil some water in a kettle and use that water to add to the water in the boiler. Bottom line: heating milk for cheese is a labor intensive process. 
The second point is that if you can find or have living kefir you do not need to buy different cultures. Kefir has bacteria that reproduce at mid temperatures and at high temperatures and it has a very complex population of many, many different cultures. The idea is that the cultures to make different cheeses live and reproduce at different temperatures. Kefir is a universal culture. I typically add about 1/4 C of kefir to the milk 
Third point and it does not really apply to raw milk but if you are using store bought pasteurized milk you want to add a scant 1/2 t of calcium chloride (your LHBS sells Ca Cl). Pasteurization damages some of the calcium in the milk and this restores this mineral. 
Fourth point: You want to dissolve any additions (Calcium chloride, lipase, rennet) in non chlorinated water. Chlorine can neutralize the action of rennet. 
Good luck!


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## mennyg19

BernardSmith said:


> Never tried anything with cream. /QUOTE]
> 
> 
> Try making yogurt. My wife makes homemade for my gastro issues. If you ferment at 105-110 degrees for 24 hours, your left with lactose free yogurt. Its all cultures and goody probiotics at that point.
> Add a drop of vanilla extract and maybe some crushed strawberries and you'll never buy another commercial yogurt again.
> PM if you want exact instructions but I bet you can find all over google.
> 
> Edit: now remembering that going through the yogurt making process with 100% cream results in French Cream. Never tried it, but I really want to, it sounds amazing.


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## BernardSmith

mennyg19 - to make yogurt you really don't need cream. You need milk and in fact heating the milk close to boiling for more than a few minutes will allow some of the water to evaporate off. This means that the yogurt will start life thicker without the need - as manufacturers do - to add all kinds of junk to artificially thicken the yogurt. Of course, you also need to allow the milk to cool to just above blood temperature before you add the cultures. Also if you allow the yogurt to drain through muslin for a shorter or longer time the thinner whey will fall out and you will be left with more concentrated curds. (Greek yogurt). 
Regarding lactose - the addition of culture transforms lactose to lactic acid and although not a chemist my understanding is that cheeses have almost zero lactose (milk's pH is around 6.5, I think, my cheeses tend to have a pH of about 4. Milk is sweet but many cheeses, unless the cultures are washed off using specific techniques, are designed not to be). 
Not totally convinced about the benefits of probiotics. Strikes me that the evidence is that they really do not sit around in our gut for any length of time. The only medically proven probiotics that we know of are those that (apologies for this) are deliberately introduced through what is called a fecal transplant. See, for example: Burke KE, Lamont JT (August 2013). "Fecal Transplantation for Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection in Older Adults: A Review.". Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. *61* (8): 1394–8
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## Sweetiepie

The book I like best is The complete guide to making cheese, butter, and yogurt at home by Richard Helweg. He explains things really well. The family cow forum has a section on making dairy products if you are still looking for a forum. I found a mozzarella recipe there that you don't have to stretch. I have my own milk cow so I have to find something to do with all that milk.


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## BernardSmith

Hi Sweetiepie. Always interested in novel cheese processes and recipes. Would you share your non stretch mozz recipe? (just started a Caerphilly cheese yesterday and was planning to make a mozz cheese this evening - but not the 30 minute variety that acidifies the milk with lemon juice or some other acid. I wanted to culture the milk with kefir so this may take until tomorrow to hit a pH of 5.2


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## Sweetiepie

Easy Peasy Pizza cheese

4 gallons raw cow's milk
1 1/2 cups yogurt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/8 tsp powdered calf rennet (or follow the directions for what ever rennet you have)
3/8 cup kosher salt


In a double boiler, warm milk to 90*F. Whisk yogurt with buttermilk and enough warmed milk to make it pourable, then whisk into kettle of milk. 

Turn off heat and cover. Maintain temp while acidifying milk for 1 hour. Dissolve rennet in 1/4 cup cool water. Gently but thoroughly stir rennet into milk for about 20-30 seconds. Use skimmer to stop the motion of the milk. Check in about 45 minutes for clean break and, if achieved, cut curd into 3/4 inch cubes. 

Let curds heal for ten minutes - allow to rest without stirring. Use a skimmer to gently lift curds and cut any that are large into smaller pieces. Turn heat to medium-low and allow to come to 105* F, about one hour. Occasionally stir gently if you wish, but I did not, as I did chores during this time. 

Ladle curds into a cloth-lined colander. After draining for an hour or so, toss with salt and continue to drain overnight or 6- 8 hours. I then refrigerate for a day and then shred in a food processor and freeze but you can shape it how ever you want.


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## BernardSmith

ah... Thanks. But is this a meltable cheese - a pasta filata? Does it melt the same way that mozzarella melts? I would have thought the relatively low temperature at which it is "cooked" (105 F rather than 150- 180F) means that it would tend to crumble rather than slice but perhaps there is enough whey still in the curds (since there is no pressing, only draining, and stirring the curds is "occasional" and not continuous (the stirring expels the whey from the curds)..


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## Sweetiepie

It melts like other home made stretched mozzarella, but not as well as store bought. I don't usually slice my mozzarella so I am not sure but it holds a shape, not sure if it would crumble when a knife goes across it. I shred it because it is easier for me to cook with that way.


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## BernardSmith

OK... I am going to make a batch of this tonight. I was planning on a slow mozzarella but this seems much faster while still making use of the complexities of flavor offered by cultures rather than acidity, and if it works ... it works. Thanks, Sweetiepie.

Wait.. that is a fair amount of salt, isn't it? 1 C of salt = 16 T so 3/8 = 6T and if I use 1 gallon of milk that is about 1.5 T of salt...


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## BernardSmith

One question, though. It is not clear whether the rise in temperature from 90 - 105F takes an hour or whether it takes say, 30 minutes and you hold the temperature at 105 for the hour. Do you have a sense of this? Thanks.


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## Sweetiepie

That is the amount of salt the recipe calls for but if you are going to eat it fresh or freeze it, you could add less. I have always understood her recipe to be, warm gradually to 105 taking an hour but I have gotten new stoves at one point and it warmed sooner and I held it there and it worked fine. 

I hope it works well for you. I probably should of told you before, I am not much of a cheese connoisseur, more of a mom and if she finds something her family likes she sticks with it kind of person. As kids get older, that gets rarer.


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## BernardSmith

Made some last night and it is now in my refrigerator in a ball. Will try slicing this tonight and perhaps make a pizza to test it. By the way, the secret of the slow rise in temperature is not to heat the curds. What you do is use a double boiler and you heat the water in the boiler to about 10 degrees hotter than the temperature you are aiming for (in this case 105F, so you heat the water to 115F and then you place the kettle with the curds (in this case at 90 F) in the pot with the hot water and the heat will slowly raise the temperature of the curds to 105F. For what it's worth, in my opinion, you never really want to heat the milk or the curds directly as the bottom of the pot will be far hotter than the top - even if you stir the milk like a banshee and you can find that the milk at the bottom is cooked and so won't contribute anything to the cheese. 
The importance of the slow rise in temperature is, I think, to prevent the curds from too quickly being sealed and so preventing more of the whey to be expelled. In the end I allowed the temperature to rise in 30 minutes and held it for another 60 before draining off the whey. I also tweaked your recipe: added 1 t of calcium chloride (dissolved in 1/4 C of distilled water) because I was using pasteurized milk. Pasteurization (not UHT! ) damages or destroys some of the protein chains and the Ca Cl neutralizes this problem


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## JohnT

Any chance at seeing some pictures?


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## Sweetiepie

Wonderful! I have my own milk cow so I am glad you know how to fix the pasteurization. Also the yogurt and buttermilk is made fresh from the cow and not store bought, so I am unsure if that matters. 

I do use a 5 gallon stainless steel double boiler and love it. It keeps a constant temperature with out adding more heat. 

I have not taken any pictures of my cheese making and currently my milk cow is dried off for calving this spring. But when I start again, I can.


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