I was moving my cheese cave and I took all of the cheese out and I found some pepper jack that I made in January. I thought everything I had was cheddar.

Anyway, I made it from raw milk, and it tastes really good, but it is crumbly. A little dry and a little crumbly. What do you do to make the cheese moister?

Cut the curds larger, or cook them less, or press it less?

I went back and looked at my cheese log and it says that I increased the pressing weight, because it was coming out too moist. So I increased it from 45lbs for 12 hours, to 60lbs for 12 hours.

I’m assuming that is probably it, since it is the only change that I noted.

I wish I had such a loaded cave that I would be surprised that way!

I went back to all three of my books and read the pressing instructions. For a 4” mold Tim Smith says 40lbs for 12 hours and Ricki Carroll says 10lbs for 12 hours for the same size mold. That’s a big difference.

I use a 6” mold and I chose 60lbs. Now I know, 60lbs makes a slightly dry cheese.

I only have cheddar and pepper jack in my cave, I just thought it was all cheddar. It was a pleasant surprise to find it though. I’m making more tomorrow so I can work on this pressing issue.

Tammy, if you find out how to make a moist Jack, I’d be very glad to hear about it.  ALL of my efforts at Jack cheese have turned out drier than I wanted them to be.  I know Neil will say that it’s acidity related; but according to my pH meter, that is not the culprit.  I’m thinking maybe slightly larger curd and more gentle stirring during the cook phase.  All I’ve achieved so far is to get a nice moist wheel out of the press, only to have it weep after sealing.

My recipe says that the ending ph should be 5.9 to 6.0 when you put it in the press. Is that what you have? I don’t know where I found these numbers at, they are not in my recipe books, so I had to hunt them up on the internet.

I check the ph level on all of my cheeses that I can find a ph level for.

So tell me, does a higher ph make a drier cheese or vise versa?

I went to another forum and found a detailed ph marker list for Monterey Jack.

At Rennet - 6.5
At Curd Cut - 6.45
After Cooking - 6.3
At Draining - 6.2-6.3
At Hooping - 5.4
After Pressing - 5.1-5.4

This is not what I had in my recipe, so I will try this tomorrow.

pH is either acidic or alkaline.  Neutral is generally considered to be 7; above this is alkaline and below is acidic.  The lower the number the more acidic it is.  So, lower would equal dryer.

Now, someone needs to tell me how to sample the pH on a solid cheese.  Apparently the solid needs to be dissolved into a liquid in order to be able to test it.  And I would assume the liquid needs to be of neutral pH.  However, the act of dissolving would also reduce the concentration of the material being tested, would it not?  Is there a course called, “pH testing 101?”

I don’t know how you measure that either, but I do read it a lot.

I don’t understand how the ph level changes from the time of draining to the time of hooping. All you do is drain it in a collander, put it back in the pot and salt it and add the peppers, but the ph is supposed to drop from 6.2 to 5.4. What makes it drop? You don’t want to hold it out long enough to get cold, you want to press it warm so it will matt.

I just plunge my PH meter into the curds and leave it for a while to make sure the reading does not change.
Also remember that the chemistry continues so the PH keeps dropping, I was told once to use a weaker starter culture if the PH changes too quickly, maybe try half the starter and see how it goes.

Neil, doesn’t that foul the tip of your meter?  I agree with you, Tammy, that it seems incomprehensible that the pH would drop that far in such a short time - given that it takes so long to get to the initial 6.2.  And 5.4 sounds to me to be a bit too acidic for a Jack cheese.  I drain my cheddars at 5.95, and Jack’s are much milder than cheddar.

I have learned a lot from this post. I have been checking ph levels, but didn’t know what they meant. Since I started this I have searched the internet for ph markers for pepper jack, and the ones that I posted above the author even stated that ph markers were a personal preference as well. Once you learned how they work then you can adjust to the way you like it. I didn’t know how they worked until now. I must do some experimenting now to get it right. I have a lot of stuff about cheese ph and salt absorption in the past two days.

My cheese was only slightly dry and my recipe said to drain it, salt it and add peppers when it was 5.9 to 6.0 and I’m sure I did that. I have a log that I keep where I put the recipe in there, and after it I make notes of things I had trouble with. If I didn’t put in a note then it worked just fine.

That brings me to things I had trouble with. The heating of the curd. It says to heat at 3 degrees every 5 minutes. I did a much slower heating than that. I think it was supposed to take 30 minutes and it took me 55 minutes to heat it. What does that do to the cheese? Does it make it a little dry? I might post this question by itself as well in case people are tired of this thread.

The curds are soft and I wash the tip real good afterwards and have had no problem.