Quick question here,  I just took a Leiden out of the cave and it is my best one so far.  I had pressed my others at too high weight and they were very dry and crumbly.  This one I did at a way lower weight and it was much, much better.  I did notice however,  that it has a very slight rubberiness ( if that’s a word) to it.  I’m hyper critical of anything I make however,  my family didn’t care.  They love it.  I’m wondering if I decreased the rennet by say even 1/2 teaspoon on the next one would that make a difference.  I notice in my notes that I had trouble getting a clean break and was somewhat in a hurry.  So for about 14 litres of milk I had put in not quite a teaspoon of liquid rennet, single strength and when I didn’t get a clean break after about 1 hour,  I added another whole teaspoon and had my clean break quite quickly.  I’m thinking almost 2 teaspoons of single strength might have been alot?  What do you think?  Also my husband thought that the curd possibly needed a better ratio of milk to cream.  I tend to skim off most of the cream cuz I make butter out of it.  In this cheese,  I obviously used milk that I had “skimmed” by hand, most of the cream off of.  Should I up the amount of cream?  What is the consensus here?

Hi Kbjug, I’m using 3/4 tsp rennet on 16 ltr and although the label doesn’t mention it, I’m quite sure it is double strenght. So 1 1/2 tsp should be ok for 14 ltr. Are you sure the culture was enough and “alive”? Leiden is originally made of skimmed milk, so it’s more a matter of taste if you want it more creamy. I use to make it from whole unskimmed milk. How old was the cheese when you tried it? Was it waxed or coated?

Okay,  I coat my cheese the same way that you do Herman, with the stuff that you paint on.  The cheese was about 5 weeks old,  which for us is just perfect.  I actually use too big of a mold for my Goudas and so my cheese ends up only about 2 or 2 1/2 inches thick and almost 8 inches across.  It works and as the paste on this one was perfect I will continue to use it until I can afford a Kadova.  I’m making a Gouda as I write this and my clean break is almost there using 1 1/4 tsp of single strength rennet on about 15 litres of milk,  but it took over 2 hours.  That’s okay cuz I have plenty of time today.  I used whole unskimmed raw milk and I guess we’ll see what happens.  So I did just what my question was…..upped the cream and lowered the rennet.  Wish me luck!

I wish you luck

With a 2 hour wait for a clean break I vote that either you don’t have enough culture, or your culture is old, or you don’t have enough rennet. 2 hours is a very long time. I would research all over the place and compare these ingredient amounts in different recipes before I made a change though.