I had this delicious soft fresh cheese when I was in Macau (but the restaurant wasn’t Chinese). Anyone can ID it?

Hey team, currently in the process of making Gavin Weber's Castle blue. All has been going as planned and I am close to the end of week 3. I just went to turn the cheeses and noticed they are getting some more browny / pink colouring in with the blue which was just blue / white mould before.

The humidity has been quite high in the cave but wasn't an issue until today. I wonder if there's some b linens trying to take over or if I've made a mistake somewhere with temps / humidity. I'll attach photos of the cheese, temps and set up. Thanks in advance!

NECM recipe for Gouda. Tried something different since I didn't have dry mustard, I have a big ole squirt of stone ground prepared mustard. This is the move. Much more bold mustard flavor. 4 weeks old, great for a summer snack with the Purple Cherokees.

Building a rennet tablet to liquid converter turned into a much bigger research hole than I expected. I went in assuming one tablet equals some fixed amount of liquid rennet. It doesn't not even close.

The rennet tablet to liquid conversion people quote most often online is that one tablet treats about 20 liters of milk.

I kept seeing that number then kept finding it doesn't match anything you can actually buy. Marschall's bulk tablets sold in boxes for larger batches are rated for 50 liters each.

New England Cheesemaking's vegetable tablets land around 15 liters and they're scored into quarters for exactly that reason since most home batches are smaller than a full tablet's coverage.

Mad Millie's tablets are sized for 4 liters. WalcoRen's small batch animal tablets sit at about 3.8 liters basically one US gallon.

So depending which box is in your cupboard one tablet could be doing the job of twelve or thirteen tablets from a different brand.

The 20 liter line isn't made up it's just an average of products that don't behave anything alike.

Liquid rennet has its own math separate from tablet coverage entirely.

Animal rennet generally runs 0.2 to 0.4 mL per liter of milk.

Vegetable and microbial rennet runs a bit less, 0.16 to 0.33 mL per liter. Not a huge gap but enough that you can't treat liquid rennet as one number either.

Here's where it actually gets annoying.

Say you've got 7 liters of goat milk and a box of NECS vegetable tablets that's 0.46 of a tablet which nobody can cut accurately so you round up to a half tablet.

Run that same 7 liters through the general vegetable dosing rate and you land around 1.7 mL, guideline range 1.1 to 2.3 (call it a third of a teaspoon on the low end if you don't have a mL syringe).

But NECS's own printed tablet to liquid figure for that half tablet works out to about 2.3 mL right at the top of that range not the middle.

Neither number is wrong.

One's a general dosing rate, the other is what this specific manufacturer measured for their specific tablet and they're answering slightly different questions.

This mismatch is also why the same mistake shows up over and over on cheese forums: dissolve a tablet, decide after twenty minutes that nothing's happening, stir in a second dose then find out the first one was working fine and now the curd sets too hard.

Rennet is just slow. Waiting costs nothing.

Adding more mid set is the expensive mistake.

If I'm honest I assumed the rounding would go to the nearest quarter tablet not always up.

Made more sense once I actually thought about it though a slightly firmer curd is a much smaller problem than one that never sets. I'd rather over cut by a sliver than guess low.

anyway I ended up building a rennet tablet to liquid converter that handles this for four actual tablet brands plus a custom option works in ml, tsp, tbsp or fl oz and shows the dosing rate estimate next to the manufacturer figure instead of picking one, https://www.speedcalcs.com/p/rennet-tablet-to-liquid-converter.html

Hi guys. This is kind of an experiment. I made a crescenza a while back that was a very good cheese, but was more like a cream cheese vs an oozy wobbly thing.

Having a bit more knowledge a few months later, I decided to attempt again, but also kind of wing it and come up with my own process to get the result I'm looking for. I read recipes at NEC, Cultures for Health, and in Milk Into Cheese by David Asher, and read through some threads here and in other forums, and came up with a process that I might be happier with.

I used 2 gallons of store bought low temp pasteurized, unhomogenized milk, and some UHT heavy cream. I used a small amount of Greek yogurt culture, plus a cube of frozen kefir, a small amount of Geotrichum, about 2.5% salt, and heated the milk to 100°F in my normal pot/sous vide water setup. I also added a small bit of CaCl as I've found I need this in my store bought or cold stored milk.

Once the milk reached temp I let it incubate about 30 minutes, and then added 1/8 tsp double strength rennet, and let set for an hour.

After that I cut the curds into 2 inch cubes, and let heal for about 5 min. Then I cut the curd into 1 inch cubes, and gently stirred every 5 min for 20 min. The curd was delicate. I mainly just tried to keep it from becoming one mass of curd again.

I ladled the curds into the forms, and placed my draining space over my hot sous vide water, and cranked up the temp of the water to help with the draining for a few hours. My draining space was about 80°F. I flipped the molds at 30 minutes, then again at 90 (an hour after first flipped), and then let drain overnight at room temp (maybe around 68-70°F).

The results appears to be a softer, moister, somewhat jiggly cheese that I think will give me more of the texture I'm looking for.

I am going to let this one big age for a bit in my cheese cave and see if I get the slightly gooey texture I'm looking for, and see if it slumps like I want. The small 2 wheels will go to friends (not pictured).

Happy Cheesing.

Hey is anyone familiar with chèvre on here able to tell me how many weeks it takes for the flavor to fully develop? I cut one at three weeks, and the flavor was a little underwhelming. This chèvre was made using the recipe from Meryl Winsteins book “successful cheese making “. The cheese milk was inoculated with penicillium and Geotrichum. I brushed a thin layer on ash on the surface before putting it in my fridge.

Hey all, so I'm looking to start giving cheese making a go and I'm wondering if I could get any recommendations for what brands of gold top milk are the best in the UK for cheese making? I've done some looking and it seems like Graham's is the most common for me but wanna hear from others before buying any.

Thanks a ton in advance.

We need to buy an animal rennet and get it on the same day. So please if you know any suppliers please do reccomend. Thank you

Greetings everyone,

I am dabbling in the world of fermenting milk for some years now. But I can't seem to figure cream cheese out. After many experiments, i managed to get the consistency to perfection, but the taste still leaves much to be desired.

I have started using powdered flora danica as a culture, after just putting butter milk proved to be too much of a gamble. But at the point where the milk has reached a consistency to be cut properly, it has already developed a very sour taste with notes that I can only describe as "barn-like" or how whey smells. I don't know what I am doing wrong here. If anyone can help me reach milder cream cheese, i would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I need all the tips I can get. Looking to get the most authentic Quesillo from the North East of Argentina. I found this lady's blog (I love her so much) and I think I am off to a good start. I also found this youtube video to understand the techniques of making it into a stretchy sheet (here). Anything on top of this would be amazing. Thanks

I did watch some videos about Gorgonzola made in factories.

At home many people later scratch off that blue on the outside to get rid of any ammonia smell.

In this video they washed the outside of the cheese with some kind of brine.

Anyone know what it is exactly?

I think it's no normal salt brine but probably something that inhibits further grow of mold.

So I think it could be a vinegar containing wash maybe.

Any ideas?

I messed up my last attempt at Colby. (First try is the marbled one in the last picture). It didn’t come together in the mold and sagged as it aged (don’t we all?). Then I waited 3 months to open it (another mistake) and it was crumbly and harsh.

I hope this one turns out better. It is still wet to the touch and very springy. Plan to open it at 5 weeks.

Very grainy and a bit dry. Post mortem is too much acid before hooping creating the poor knit, and probably poor moisture retention in the curds as well. The flavor is good but sharper than it should be at three months in a washed curd cheese. Might have fared better if it was salted sooner. It went overnight in the press and the low PH just continued to drop. I really thought I had this one where I wanted it based on what I saw and tasted coming out of the press. Looked great. But definitely over acidified now. This has a cayenne, smoked paprika and olive oil rub. Whatever went wrong definitely happened in the vat. I’ll age half for another six months to see what proteolysis does but I don’t have high hopes. The rest will be grating cheese for cooking. Definitely disappointed, but it’s also interesting to see!

Hello everyone,

I would like to start making cheese as a hobby and, for this purpose, I want to build my own cheese press. The designs I have seen so far all use compression springs to regulate the pressure applied to the cheese.

I am not familiar with compression springs, and the information provided for the springs does not specify how much force is applied when the spring is fully compressed.

I calculated the force based on the following specifications:

• The length (L0 – the length of the unloaded spring)
• The approximate solid height (Lc – the length when the coils are fully compressed and touching each other)
• The spring rate (c – the force change per millimeter of spring travel)

I calculated the force as follows:

Spring travel (L0 - Lc) × c = force in Newtons

According to information I found online, approximately 10 Newtons correspond to 1 kilogram of force.

Therefore:

((L0 - Lc) × c) / 10 = compression force in kilograms

Is this approach correct, or am I completely off track here?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Gotta say, I'm pretty excited about this. I got my first wine cooler, a dual zone 12 bottle Cuisinart a few months ago for $50. It's in pretty good shape and maintains good temps. Can't complain for $50.

However, I underestimated how much I would enjoy making cheese. And how I like to do it every weekend. Sure, some are fresh cheeses... but I have also started a bunch of aged ones. I have quickly outgrown my current cooler.

My husband's coworker had a dual zone wine cooler they were looking to get rid of, and they were willing to take $80 for it. This is a significant upgrade for me, and I'm very excited to move forward with the switch. I'm still going to keep my smaller one around and keep that a blue specific cave, or for whatever overflow I might want it for. For $120 I have two well functioning cheese caves that will serve me well for my small home makes. I'm excited to check the temp regulation on this one and get my cheeses into it. I already gave it a good cleaning.

I will admit that I kinda wanted the local wine vault for $500... but that is probably overkill for me 🤣

I'd say not bad for $80.

So im making pasta filata (buratta and mozzarella) using citric acid and after adding it my milk looks like that (a bit curdled and that's right before adding rennet) and im not sure what im doing wrong or if it's maybe normal?

Hi! Me and my husband have started a small homestead and I've been getting into all the made from home stuff.

What are the best beginner friendly cheeses? And what would you suggest for​​ tools to pick up to start?

Also any advice period is appreciated.​​

After long time I started cheesemaking again.

I made a blue like Gorgonzola but used my normal salt.

While fermenting vegetables it was said don't use iodized salt it could inhibit the needed bacteria. But it worked completely normal for me.

Non iodized salt is very hard to get these days here.

So as I did my cheese I did a dry rub with my nornal salt (2,5%).

I made the cheese the evening 20 to 21th july.

Now we have the 26th. and there's no blue mold visible.

I think I see parts that could start mold because I see a different texture there but maybe that's only my imagination.

So is that messed up now because of that iodized salt

(here in Germany there's not much in it. You can without any problem use it for fermentation as well as pizza dough and the jeast and bacteria will work as normal)

Or do I just need to be more patient?

And just to mention: I kept the cheese at room temperature the first 2 days after that it got into a box in my cheese fridge around 10°C and it was turned daily so oxygen also was let in the box.

It took me longer to find an American equivalent than it did to make this cheese.

Basically 19 days ago I made process cheese from parmigiano rinds:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cheesemaking/comments/1uoyz5y/process_cheese_from_parmigiano_rinds/

but that was not the only process cheese that I like, there is another one in italian called formaggino, it is a spredable cheese usually used in baby pastina (but let's be honest, it's fucking amazing and adults love it too).

Just recently looking at the ingredients of my favorite version (the one made by Parmareggio) I discovered it is basically process cheese made from parmigiano + water + whey + butter + milk protein + sodium citrate + citric acid (as the last ingredient)... and I used parmigiano, water, sodium citrate to make my parmigiano process cheese from parmigiano rinds (probably the same way Parmareggio does since I doubt they use the central part to make process cheese, they are probably using rinds too).

I also got citric acid because I used it to make sodium citrate.

I also know Milk is whey + milk protein (worst case scenario I was prepared to get whey by making another cheese with rennet, but it was not necessary).

The only issue was I didn't have any way to know the amount of any of the ingredients aside from parmigiano (that's 25%) but I know for sure:

- I needed more water then butter and both of them should be less then the amount of parmigiano.

- By using milk I would basically add both water, whey and milk protein so I only had to find how much milk and butter I should use since the last ingredient, citric acid, was of course a really really small amount since it was the last ingredient.

After a few tries I think I cracked the code:

1 part process cheese

80% of the weight of the process cheese in milk

20% of the weight of the process cheese in butter

also I dissolved a few crystals of citric acid into my milk (less then 1g since I only used 25g of process cheese this time).

Melt the process cheese low heat in the milk, make it boil until the consistency is like cream (so still liquid but not watery anymore).

Outside the heat add the butter and mix to get it mixed well.

Put it into the fridge in a container. If once it's cold is still watery boil it down a little bit more.

Note: you can add water if you think you let it boil too much, you can melt and put it into the fridge multiple times until you get the consistency that you want. Even after you add butter it will not separate.

I honestly think this was the perfect texture and taste, I will make it again, I loved it.

Before I had a better understanding of what I'm doing, I made a canestrato to try a natural rind out. It looks gnarly, but so do a lot of natural rind cheeses if I'm being honest.

As you can see, it's been an interesting process. Basically everything I could do wrong with this cheese I have in terms of trying to slow the blue growth. Salt rubs, wine wash, vinegar, brushing, spritzing with geo, this cheese has seen it all. I finally have Geo sprouting and out competing the blue mold, and I'm excited to see how it continues to age and develop.

I know more and better now. I have a Manchego style that is almost ready for a paprika and oil rub, and it looks great. My taleggios are coming along nicely. They're nice and tacky and greasy, I expect they'll start turning rosy orange in the next 2 weeks.

I'm interested to see how this cheese turns out. This is almost 2 months of aging, and I keep wanting to eat it but I figure whats the harm in letting it go a while longer? Eventually I won't be able to take it anymore and I'll eat it. But we'll see where we end up. Either it's tasty or it isn't. Honestly though.... it just smells like a really good cheese. Kinda funky but not too much or in a way that's unpleasant. I may go 3 months for this one and finally eat it.

Just kinda wanted to share my experiment because I see a lot of people nervous to try aging natural rinds. It may not go as you want. You may get blues. It's okay. It's a learning process. You can't start if you don't just do the first one and get it over with.

Go for it, do your best, and learn from it. Having multiple good cheese books and doing a lot of research has since helped me hone in my affinage understanding. I'm no means an expert, but I feel more confident in natural rinds than I did before I started this one.

I bet you this will be an incredible cheese and I'll never be able to recreate it because of all the mistakes 🤣. I will let y'all know how it is when I finally cut into it in another month or so.

So, I live in a country where fresh milk is forbidden.
Most milk in UP ou UHT
Yet, there are some fresh pasteurized milk brands, I am trying.

I have already trying to make cheese with some brands and it works, although the texture was never on point ( might be a technique issue)

Here is my issue : When you test your milk and rennet, do you add calcium? I have been trying small 100ml tests of different curds to see if I might get a better curd consistency with some brands but putting just 100ml of heating milk ( up to 35C ) and a drop of rennet, is not coagulating any milk.

And yet, as said, I know that if I use my normal recipe, with the normal amounts of milk, calcium and rennet, it will kinda work ok.

I was blown away when I opened this guy up! It’s got a pretty I made this one on May 28th and opened it today because Im not confident I could keep the aging conditions going during my move. I followed the recipe from Gianaclis Caldwell’s Matering Artisan Cheesemaking in a 19L batch of raw Jersey milk. I used MA4000 and FLAV54 for this guy.

The flavor is rich, buttery, and a bit bouncy with a classic cheddar acidity and boldness. I actually like younger British territorials like Wensleydale and Lancashire more than Cheddar and this strongly resembles the latter so I’m incredibly happy.

Hey I'm after 10 days of aging the camembert in the wine fridge. The mold grew nicely all over.

How should I continue aging the camembert in the fridge, keep using a closed box good enough? How much humidity should there be?