I’ve been making cheese for about a year now and have made the following;

Gouda (twice)
Traditional Cheddar (twice)
Colby
Monterey Jack
Pepper Jack
Gruyere
Cotswold (twice)
Farmhouse Cheddar
Camembert
English Stilton

The hard cheeses have all been from Ricki Carroll’s or Tim Smith’s books and I followed the recipes to the letter and did a pretty good job of hitting all the temperatures.

The problem is that all the cheese except the latest Cotswold have been extremely dry and crumbly and nothing like the store bought equivalent. The monterey jack which I thought would be the softest of the cheeses, based on commercial examples, was so dry and flavorless that I tossed it out.

What am I doing wrong?

I recently started using non-homo milk and the first cheese that I’ve opened was the Cotswold and it had a very creamy texture and I’m extremely pleased and proud of this cheese. Maybe this was the key? I need to wait and try more cheeses made from this milk before making any conclusions. I always use whole milk but I’ve seen several recipes that include a small % of half and half or heavy cream. What do these additions add to the final cheese?

Sorry for all the questions, I’ll stop there. I feel like my 5yr old with all these questions.

Thanks for any help/advise you can give,

Mark

Hi Mark,

u welcome , ask as much as u want here, we are pleased to help…

Homo Milk is bad for any professional cheeses…. 
when u add more cream , u are rising the fat content which gives the cheese more softness and creamier flavor

Regarding the dryness ...

Cheese making is a simple and complex biology chemical and physical process…

dryness could be caused by, hight acid development during cooking and pressing , higher cooking temp (not ur case as u said above)..
i think ur case is hight acidity , and milk type (homo)

Without having a way to measure pH which steps in the process should be shortened to decrease acidity? The final length of time you stir the curd at 100-102F? I think for the next few batches I’m going to add 2cups of half and half to my 2gal of whole non-homo milk.

Mark

control the time, culture amounts. follow receipts, adding cream not always is a good thing, based on the cheese type..

example: blue cheeses needs more fat

I’m starting to think that 1 packet of culture is too much. I might play with using 2/3 a packet and see what happens. Since it’s good for 2-3gal of milk that seems like a reasonable place to start. Thanks.

Mark

Too much salt will also dry out the cheese and maybe your storage might attribute to it. All commercial milks are homogenized so the cream does not separate. It sounds like the US milk is more processed with Ultra pasteurization. In Canada her its not so bad but u have to test all your milk brands to see what works best. I use 2% and add 18% cream to it. SO flavor can be affected by the type of culture and the milk brand u use.

I couldn’t wait so I came home and opened up a batch of cheddar that I made 11/1/07. This was the first batch I made using the non-homogenized milk, the cotswold was the second. I wanted to see if the texture and flavor of the cotswold was a fluke or if it was a milk thing. I’m happy to report that it seems to be a milk thing. This batch had it’s problems though. The final weight was 26oz compared to the 32oz I expected. While it dried it became really cracked on the outside so either I added too much salt or too much acid was developed. I’m sure the salt amounts in the books I have are just guidelines. Is there a ROT for how much salt to add to the curds before pressing?

Mark

95% is acid thing, salt make it drier , firmer, less moisture, but acid make it crumble and flaky

one more thing, if u drain ur curds very late, u will end up with more crumble cheese like feta

Nabil - 12 March 2008 09:33 AM

one more thing, if u drain ur curds very late, u will end up with more crumble cheese like feta

Please explain what you mean by this. You mentioned the acid thing being 95% of it. Would reducing the amount of culture by a 1/3 as mentioned above help with this or do I also need to reduce the amount of stirring at the final temp? For example, in Rikki’s book the Monterey Jack calls for a 30min rest at 100F, then drain the whey down to the level of the curd and let sit another 30min. Where in this process can one reduce the amount of acid produced if acid is a problem? Sounds like I need a way to measure pH

reduce the culture amount a lot , stirring is not ur problem here, nor cooking time..

acid and temp and time are effecting each others

more acid = less moisture
more temp = less moisture
more time = less moisture

more acid and less temp and long time = high moist crumbly , like feta
less acid and high temp and less time = hard cheese like swiss
less acid and high temp and long time = hard cheese like romano
less acid and less temp and long time = semi hard firm cheddar

  i hope i did not confused you

I’ve never measured how much culture is in one of those DS packets. When I’ve used bulk culture I’ve used 1/4tsp but I’ve just been sprinkling the entire packet in recently since getting them from cheesemaking.com. Next time I’ll go with a heaping 1/8 teaspoon and see how it goes. My daughter really wanted me to make colby and it turned out very hard and crumbly and not something we could easily slice for sandwiches.

Mark

check in cheesemaking.com how much milk is this package for..

Try the new quantity and u will be happy with the result…