The Thanksgiving holiday provided me with some time off work, so what better way to spend some of it than to make a cheese? I went through the usual routine of sanitizing and decided on making a Colby. Everything went quite normally until I noticed that the curd had not set in the normal amount of time. The recipe called for 30 minutes; but after 40 minutes there was almost NO action. I was not too concerned at this point, but my curiosity was piqued. However, when there was no curding after an hour I was quite concerned. To make a long, and unpleasant, story short - after 6 hours there was still noting like curd. Instead it was almost the thickness of warm sour cream. I mentally went over the steps taken several times, and I’m confident that nothing was forgotten - they were written down in the log book as they were done. So, my plans to make a second cheese are on hold until I work out what happened. I’m going to test the rennet today. Its fairly fresh, and I’ve already made 3 or 4 cheeses from it with no problems. The same thing goes for the starter culture. The milk was fresh from the dairy, about 12 hours from the cow. Maybe it was one of those freak things; but that doesn’t sound very scientific. Any suggestions on where else to look???
