Hi!  I’ve been making cheese for about a year now.  At first I used homogenized pasteurized milk from Costco (it seemed to make the best cheese for the money).  There was no problem with soft cheeses.  Then I started making hard cheeses-cheddar, gouda, derby, leicester, etc.  I know that I used too much rennet and therefore my cheeses were overacidified.  Some of the cheeses tasted good to very good but most tasted bitter and the texture was without exception dry and grainy.  Then I found a raw milk source and since then my cheeses (with a rennet downsizing) have been much better.  It seems much easier to get a strong curd with raw milk (I did use Calcium Chloride with my homogenized pasteurized milk).
    So my question is: is it possible to make a really great hard cheese with homogenized pasteurized milk?

IMHO - NO.

LOL, use skim or 2% then add cream (I use 18%) then it will work fine, I get strong curds. Bitterness is normally fro too much rennet.

Well homogenised and pasteurised are two different things?

I would have thought there was no debate that unHOMO is important to get good curds.

In this country cheese makers can’t use unpasteurised milk. I found a good article somewhere (I could find the link again if you want) about debate here and apparently, there is very little debate. Cheesemakers (even the artisan ones) don’t want the hassle to use unpasteurised milk (which would require lots of extra testing). And according to this article, 90% of cheese in france is made with pasteurised milk, and no one is saying that only 10% of french cheese is any good.

But .. I am very interested to hear others (obviously I have no personal experience) speak from their experience and elaborate on the difference. Here we can get excellent unHOMO milk readily, but getting unpasteurised involves a long drive to a dairy who is secretly selling it out his back door.

There’s also the issue of how long the cheese has to mature .. I’ve heard anything from 45-90 days!

Anyway .. enlighten me!

Okay, here’s my take…...
I think it is very possible to make good cheese using store bought. homogonized and pasteurized milk. The reason I feel this way is because I have been doing it for the past three years.
I have not been able to find a source for raw milk, so I work with what I have access to and quite honestly I would put several of my cheeses up against anything that can be bought in the store.
Now having said that, I will say this…...
I’m dying to give raw milk a try.
There is no doubt in my mind that raw milk will produce a superior final product than store bought, since the milk has not been processed.
I’m very happy with most of the cheese that I make (and get rave reviews from several cheese loving family members and friends) but I can’t help but wonder what I could turn out if I had access to “real milk”.
Just my two cents….

Dave

But what if you were to make the change to unhomo. milk .. do you think that would make much differnce? Or do you think the CaCl2 compensates? And what about other factors which affect the quality of the milk, like being organic? What the cows have been fed? if they’re happy? if they’re healthy? Or the breed of cow?

Samantha..
I think that being able to find un-homogonized milk would make a huge difference in the quality of the final cheese. In my opinion homoginization is more harmful to the milk than pasteurization.
I’m sure that CACL2 helps the milk but in no way do I believe that it restores the milk to it’s original state.
As for the “other factors”......well there’s no doubt that they play a very major role in the final product that is made.
Many cheeses today have protected names (Stilton, Camembert, Emmental, etc.) due to that very fact.
The time of year that the milk is harvested, the diet of the livestock, the airborne molds in a certain region…these all come into play in producing the final cheese.
I do believe that QUALITY raw milk will produce a better cheese than can be made from store bought.
At the same time I believe that an inferior raw milk (for instance cows that have gotten into a wild onion patch or cows that have been milked in an unsanitary environment), would produce a far inferior final product.
Like I said in my previous post….
I work with what I have available and make the best of the situation.
It’s very obvious that you want to learn and that you are willing to be flexible in your attempts at making cheese.
In my opinion that is the attitude that will have you turning out a high quality product no matter what milk source is available to you.
In case I haven’t mentioned it before, welcome to the forum. It’s really nice having members that contribute and and offer thought provoking material.

Dave

I have only been making cheese for about a year now, but I have made a lot of cheese and have had the opportunity to work with a lot of raw milk.  The cow is now dry and probably will not calve until September, so it is probably 7-8 months before I have that regular supply again.  I have also made a lot of cheese from store bought (mostly Costco) milk.  I have probably done about a 50/50 split of Raw/HP.  My observations are:

1. Raw milk is much easier to work with.  Given like conditions, the curd set is much better than using HP milk with CaCl.
2. There is a definite difference in flavor and complexity of the mold ripened cheeses, and to a lesser degree, mozzarella.
3. I was surprised that my Stilton #2, made with Costco milk, tasted just as good as my other Stiltons so far, all others made with raw milk
4. The few hard cheeses I have made with both so far , mostly manchegos, I cannot detect a significant difference in flavor or texture.  The same can be said for feta.

It is my opinion that for the cheeses that are aged there will be less difference, as much of the flavor and complexity of the cheese is the result of the slow breakdown of fats and proteins, while in cheeses that are eaten younger there is more impact from the character of and indigenous micro flora in the raw milk.

Do I think one can make great hard cheese with store bought HP milk?  Absolutely.  The vast majority of cheeses in the world are made with pasteurized milk, and it is pasteurization that upsets the calcium balance and makes the milk more difficult to work with.

Getting back to the initial post, if you were over renneting your cheese, particularly if you were using vegetable or microbial rennet, it can account for a bitter taste.  I was told by a master cheesemaker that you should only use animal rennet for cheeses that will be aged for more than 6 months.  The other rennets contain compounds that add bitter flavors to cheese as they break down over time.  I suspect your success with the raw milk is due to a combination of your more conservative use of rennet and the fact that raw milk is easier to work with and more forgiving of technique than HP milk.

Just to add another penny to the pot (not a full two cents worth), I’d like to address a question asked at the beginning - are pasteurization and homogenization the same?  No, they are not.  Pasteurization is a heat process which is used to kill bacteria - all of them.  Homogenization is a pressure process to break down the fat globules so the cream will not separate.  Both processes will certainly change the character of the milk. 

One more thing.  Is it really illegal to make cheese in Australia with raw milk, or is it just illegal to SELL cheese made from raw milk?  The same is true here in the U.S. about farmers selling milk out the back door, but its a contractual thing with the dairy they sell to, not a law.  One can sell raw milk here, but it cannot be advertised for sale.  Besides, dairy farmers are allowed to keep all the raw milk they want for their personal use.

OK .. now I’m not absolutely sure but .. it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption.
It is illegal to sell cheese made from raw milk made here but you can buy imported cheese made from raw milk. That has only recently been the case.
But I’m sure you can make cheese for your own consumption from your own cow.

Just to add another couple of points to this discussion.

In the article found recently, regarding acid, the guy who wrote it stated quite clearly that the act of making hard cheese raised the acidity to the point where ‘bad’ bacteria couldn’t survive.

So this matter of waiting 60 days is a matter of paranoia regarding ‘raw’ milk versus homo/pasteurised.

Incidentally all the homo milk sold in the local stores is all pasteurised and I produce good stuff with it.

I believe most of the problems we get are basically caused by the rennet, or even the strength of the Calcium we use, Too much, not enough, too weak, or old. Perhaps we should have a survey of Rennet problems and who bought what, from where!

The only rennet problems I’ve had are with some liquid animal rennet I bought from New England Cheesemaking. I couldn’t get it to work for anything. I called them and e-mailed them and they insisted it was user error. I’m still using the rennet tablets since I’ve always had good luck with them. I’m still bitter about the animal rennet though!

You must have gotten a bad batch.  I’ve been using NECS animal rennet for 9 months with never a problem.

I told them I thought maybe it was bad but they insisted that it couldn’t be. Anyway, I don’t buy from them anymore unless I have to. Not what I consider good customer service…..

Iowa cheese maker - 22 March 2009 06:43 PM

I told them I thought maybe it was bad but they insisted that it couldn’t be. Anyway, I don’t buy from them anymore unless I have to. Not what I consider good customer service…..

Strange. I use animal rennet from the same source and haven’t had a ‘bad’ cheese yet.

Being in the supply business I know how difficult it can be dealing with customer complaints, changing products when you’re sure you sold only good stuff can be a very expensive matter. Especially when you’re not likely to see that customer ever again.

Two sides to every coin.

I am also dealing with customers, and we always have to remember that “may be a customer is not always right, but he is always a customer”.