Have been making hard cheeses (cheddar, Caerphilly and the like), feta cheeses, chevre for almost a year and not had any problems but mozzarella is a real challenge. I use home made kefir from grains to inoculate the milk and the curds can become very acidic (close to 4.0) is there a lower limit to the pH at which the curds will stretch? Thanks
Hey Bernard, good to hear from another cheese maker. I’ve been making hard cheese for 9 years, but Mozzarella has always been a problem for me. So, while I can’t offer any helpful advice here, I can at least commiserate. I also have a problem with cheddar, that you might be able to shed some light on. I do Colby, Monterey and Pepper Jack, Gouda, Havarti with great results every time. But my cheddar, while it tastes good, is always too dry. I’ve adjusted ripening and cooking times, cook temps, and even increased the cream content - but it is always exceedingly dry and crumbly. The standard answer is that it’s too acidic; but I’m at a loss as to how to lower the acidity. Any tips?
HI Rich, Too dry and crumbly suggests to me a number of possible issues - in no particular order
1. You are stirring the curds too vigorously - gentle stirring - every few minutes is all that is required.
2. The aging room may be too dry (not humid enough).
3. If too acidic… can you check the pH? Cheddar should have a pH of about 5.0 What are you using to culture the cheese? For how long?
Stirring isn’t the problem.
The cheese is vacuum sealed, so the humidity of the aging chamber is not the problem.
I use MA11 as my culture. And my pH has never been as low as 5.0. It’s usually in the neighborhood of 5.4.
Is it possible that you are pressing at too high a pressure too quickly? Crumbly suggests poor knitting and poor knitting can be caused by a failure to expel enough whey before you press. Cursed cheddar does not seem like a good explanation and it is certainly one that won’t resolve the problem.
I haven’t looked at pressure just yet, so it’s good you brought it up. Initial press is at .7 psi, second and third presses are at 1.2 psi, and the final press is at 2 psi. I actually use a higher initial pressure for Gouda, and there is no problem with it. I understand it’s a different process, being a washed curd cheese Your point of failure to expel enough whey resulting in a dry cheese seems counterintuitive. If anything, it would seem that I would want to maintain as much moisture as possible. The wheel seems to knit quite well; but instead of having a creamy moistness to it, it’s dry. Am I misreading your advice here?
This has to do with knitting. If you expel too much whey too quickly the curds do not knit - pressure is to help the curds knit and not to expel the whey. Expelling whey too violently may also expel some of the calcium and that adds to the difficulty with knitting.. I may be wrong… but ...
Don’t have my notes with me and I use weights in lbs rather than PSI to press my cheeses - You might watch Gavin Webber on Youtube (Little Green Cheese) . I think he has a short video on cheddar cheese - but when you refer to .5 PSI as the “initial press” that is after you have spent a few hours cheddaring the curds (using their own weight to expel the whey while encouraging the curds to gently matt?)
To translate: .7 psi equals 35 lbs pressing weight on an 8” mold. I haven’t been doing the traditional cheddar, so no cheddaring. I’m doing the stirred curd cheddar recipe for now. But I also had the same problem when I did the traditional method. I’ll check out the video.
About 6 inches, I think but I place a can of beans on top of the follower and have a board (about 12 X 9 supported by four 12 inch threaded bolts) sit on the can and the can is what? 3 inches diameter so the 8 lbs are effectively sitting on 3 inches.
So your surface area is about 28 sq”. The weight would be evenly distributed by the follower; so you would be pressing at just under 3 psi.
If nothing else, this discussion has me motivated to try cheddar again, with a few alterations from previous attempts. I’ll be making cheese again on Wednesday, so cheddar it will be.
David Asher’s The Art of Natural Cheese-making suggests that you use only a few pounds of weight (he suggests a liter of whey to begin with - That’s 2 lbs - doubling the weight after 10 minutes and then leaving the cheese in the form with no weight pressing overnight).. .
I can see the lighter weight for the initial press; but no weight overnight? That sounds unrealistic. Cheddar curd is drier than other cheeses, and difficult to knit fully. The cheddar makers I have known use a lot of weight, and usually for 24 hours.
