Some one asked me to do a cheese demonstration at their store. They do home brewing, wine making and sell cheese supplies. So I decided that I would make a pasteurized stirred curd cheddar, and get it in my cheese cave, so if and when I actually do a demonstration we would have some to taste afterwards.

I forgot how much I hate pasteurized milk. It makes a nice curd, and I cut it to the right size, but by the time it gets through cooking and you have stirred it a few times it turns to little bitty pieces.

Raw milk doesn’t break down so bad.

I am trying to work out in my head how to do a demonstration in 2 hours with various pots of curd at different stages of development to show what each step looks like. I think it could be fun, but I want a cheese to sample when it’s done, and that will take 6 months to get ready. Maybe in January.

For demonstration I would at least double the culture and adding the CaCl to get a good solid curd (and add cream to bring it up to 3-4% cream, when using 2% milk) to speed it up. They just need to see the action to understand.

I agree. I expect to throw away 3 or 4 gallons of milk in the process since I won’t be doing the entire process at once. I don’t have the time frame worked out in my head yet though, I wanted to get the cheese to taste ready first

Sounds really neat Tammy!  Let us know how it goes!