Cheese A Day: I'm doing something wrong

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I'm doing something wrong

The whey I have pulling off looks more like milk than most milk does! Is my rennet effed? Am I not cooking the curds correctly? Should I make more ricotta-disasters? This has only started while using raw milk, the stuff I bought at the store that had been heavily processed was pretty light compared to this.. To be clear, *I am not blaming raw milk for my failings*. I am just very perplexed why so much matter is left in the whey. Here are some logical reasons:

I am not letting the curd acidify enough, and I should start measuring PH instead of just bleaitching about it.
The curd cutting is too fine, it wants to be more badonk-a-donk (can I say that as a fat white man?)
The rennet I'm using, which is eight months old, is way past it's prime.
Or, with raw milk this is completely normal.

Anyway, the goat milk cheese that is currently pressing has less solids in it than moocow milk. The loaf is ~70% the height of what the equivalent moocow loaf would be by volume of the milk. This isn't passing judgment, just an observation. With that in mind, it may clearly explain why goat cheese is so much more expensive than moocow cheese. I suspect that the labor involved in simply milking the two beasts is similar, but if there is a 30% downside on goats, then Econ101 says it's more expensive.

Anyway, hoping to figure out how to get more out of the milk, so there is less waste--though our animals do love some whey.

2 comments:

UnknownMarch 12, 2009 at 8:07 AM
Has nothing to do w/ raw milk - you're just not pulling all of the solids out of the milk. If you're cutting the curd in fine/small pieces you might be breaking up the curds and releasing milk solids back into the whey. Also might be a matter of adding fresh rennet, or more rennet. Depends on what you're making.

check out the University of Guelph cheesemaking site for all you ever wanted to know about making cheese and the chemistry behind it -

http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/cheese/welcom.htm
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JaphrgMarch 12, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Yes, that webpage is a wonderful resource and I've spent many an hour reading it. Anyway, this is all about making lots of mistakes, so hopefully I can learn to do it right :)
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Cheese A Day by Jeremy Pickett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at cheeseaday.blogspot.com.

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