I’m making Montasio today, which requires a blend of Meso and Thermophilic cultures.  It got me to wondering about cultures.  Meso is used for the gamut of hard cheeses - except for Italian cheese.  These use mostly thermo cultures.  The tastes are quite different.  So I’m wondering about what would happen if I made a cheddar type cheese, but used Thermophilic culture.  Anybody have experience with this?

I know that you can buy specific culture that has both meso and thermo in it. It says that the meso works during the making of the cheese and that the thermo kicks in during the aging period to help out then. It’s MA 4001. Ricki Carroll sells it as MA 4002 and this is what it says on her site.

“This is what is commonly referred to as the ‘Farmstead culture.’ It is predominantly a blend of standard mesophilic lactic acid cultures similar to MA 011 to develop the primary acidity. It also contains a S.thermophilis which will serve as a ripening culture a bit later in the process. The Mesophilic cultures will produce the acidity during the first part of the process.Then, after the cheese is salted and in the cave, the Thermophilic cultures begin to work in a ripening capacity to break down the complex proteins into simpler components.

This is a great choice for any of the cheeses made with MA011 but the added thermophilis will aid in the ripening process.”

I don’t know what the ratio of meso and thermo is in the culture so I don’t know how to do that myself. What kind of a ratio does your Montasio recipe have?

Ive used 4001 but too long to recall waht happened, however I have found no matter how I switched things around it tasted Great. Thats how I got my BlueBrie to be my fav cheese I make. Nice furry outside with a silky smooth Blue flavour and a semi hard cheese that does not run away after 90 days.

The Montasio recipe I used (from Ricki Carroll’s book) calls for 3:1 meso to thermo.  Since I use raw milk, I reduced the amount and went with 1:1.

The question I had, though, was what about substituting 100% thermo in a recipe that calls for meso?  Might have to adjust cook temps up a bit.  Also, I noticed that there wasn’t much drop in pH as it ripened.  I started at 6.95 and ended up after the cook at 6.6.  Since I didn’t have any pH marks for this cheese, I just used the times given in the recipe and recorded the pH for future reference.

I’m kind of starting over on this cheese.  I hadn’t made one for over 5 years; but I do remember that it was really good.

And here’s yet another question:  Is a different result achieved by brining rather than adding salt to the curd prior to press?

I wouldnt rely on times in a book, a good way to mess up your cheese. Altitude can have a huge differance on the outcome.

Without pH marks, I had nothing else to go by.  I agree it’s not the best, but it’s a starting point.

I say yes that brining produces a different cheese than dry salting. And if you change to thermo, and then change the temperatures, you are make a different cheese than the recipe started out with, so it’s just inventing something new. Thermo works in the aging period, not so much during the cook like meso. I saw one time that someone was going on a tour of Beecher’s and the girl giving the tour said that their Flagship cheese is a mixture of a Gruyere and a cheddar. I don’t know what parts they mixed but making a thermo cheese and then cheddaring it might be a mixture between the two. I love Beecher’s Flagship cheese. I wish I could make that.

I cracked open the Montasio this morning.  I just had to give it a try, since I was planning on making another today.

This is a great cheese!  The texture is closed, almost no mechanical holes, quite firm, but moist.  The taste reminded me of a very, very mild Swiss.  I was just going to sample it, but I found that I just kept munching on it - it’s really, really good!

Congrats !!
Glad it turned out

In some “Gouda type"cheeses here, like Old Amsterdam and the so called “Proosdij”, a blend of meso and thermo is used. The addition of thermo is giving a Gouda a more mature taste, e.g. Old Amsterdam tastes like a year old but is hardly 9 month old.
Because baby Gouda do have a tendancy to become too dry when you are aging them for a long time, I like to add about a quarter to a third thermo.

I like mixing cultures, gives interesting results

I have never had a Montasio cheese before, but now I want to try it. I’ve never blended the cultures before either so it should be a fun and delicious learning curve.

It is