I have made my 1st attempt at a starter culture for the swiss that I plan on making this weekend.  I hope that it will turn out.

First I sanitized the jar and lid in boiling water.  Then fill it with 2% milk, and sealed it.  Then boiled it with and inch of water over the top of the lid for 30 minutes.  Let it come to room temp and quickly opened it and added the thermophilic culture to it and resealed it.  It is now sitting at room temp and will be there for 16 to 24 hours.

Does this sound right?

Sounds good, proof is in the podding

I do it a little simpler I think, I boil the jar for a inute or two (and the jar lid) while doing that I microwave the milk in a jug and boil the milk (no scalding with this method) once the milk is boiled I pour into the sterilised jar. I then place the milk/jar in a bath of water to bring it down to the culturing temp (around 30 C). I then add a few grains of culture from my stock in the freezer, I have one of those fish tank (aquarium) heaters which I put in the water bath, set it at about 30 - 32 C and wrap it up in a towl to keep it insulated, turn it on and in about 8 hours the milk culture is ready. I use the starter within 24 hours, so I just refridgerate it until I am ready to make cheese. Has been working well for me. I will be making a Parma batch and a edam type Leyden this weekend.

I am doing a swiss this weekend.  Looking forward to it.  Had to skip last weekend as I had company all weekend.  Have a great day.

Update:  The culture starter worked perfectly with a nice thick pudding.  I put it into sanitized ice cube trays, and covered with plastic and put it into the freezer.  I will bag it tonight and have about 24 starter blocks ready to go.  Happy about it.  Will be trying it tomorrow with a swiss.

I’m not sure if freezing it will work, I think that might destroy a lot of the bacteria. You can keep it in the freezer when it is in the granular form because these are dry, but if you freeze it from a liquid form the water inside the bacteria will expand and damage them.

I read about doing it in the freezer on several places on the net, as well at in Ricki’s book.  I think that it will be okay.

Freezing is comman practice as long as u use it in less then 30 days.