Cheese making....my version of it.

I've learned that cheese making is really an art, hopefully I'll get better with time, but for now I am pleased with how its going. I think all three types turned out well. The cheddar is drying on a rack, the ricotta is in the fridge and the mysost is still on the stove.

I want to try Parmesan next time. I need to make a thermophilic mother culture first and just haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully this week or next.

I tired to take lots of photos of the process. I'll detail the pictures as I go.


I have a 12 quart canner that I like to use. I've put in 2 gallons of goat milk and very slowly heated it to 90 degrees. I froze my mother culture in an ice cube tray. 1 cube is equal to 1 T of culture. Cheddar takes a mesophilic culture. I add the culture and then let it ripen for an hour.


I keep tabs on the temp while its ripening, making sure it stays right at 90 degrees.

After it has ripened, I add in the rennet and stir it for a minute or two till I see it just starting to set up. Then it sets again till the curd is firm enough to make a clean break when a knife is inserted.


You can see how firm the curds are. I let them sit for 30 minutes then begin slowly heating them to 100 degrees while gently stirring to bring out the whey. The whole thing is really a time consuming process. I hold them at 100 for about a half hour and continue to turn the curds.

They are then ready to drain. I have a nice butter cloth I use to line a strainer and pour the whole thing out into another pan and let it all drain for about 15 minutes. Once the curds have drained, I dump them into a bowl and crumble them up, adding 1T of salt. It's important to use salt that doesn't have iodine in it, most table salt does. I have some nice large grained kosher salt that I like to use. I then transfer the curds to a cheese cloth lined mold and press it at 40 lbs for 12-15 hours. I then turn it and press at 50 lbs. for 24 hours. once its done it is salted and put on a rack to air dry. After 3 days I wax it. It could be wrapped in saran, but hey, the wax looks cool.


Here is the cheese just removed from the mold and the cheesecloth. I put a quarter on it to show the size.


Waxed and ready to go into the fridge to age a bit. This is one I made a couple weeks ago.


Ricotta


I add a pint of cream to the still warm whey that has drained from the curds and slowly heat the whole thing to 195 degrees. You can see by the picture that its already 1:25 in the afternoon. It will take a couple hours for the ricotta to be done. I started the whole process at about 7 am.


I drain the whey from the ricotta overnight. In the morning it looks good.


The finished product. I ended up with about 1.75 lbs of ricotta.


Mysost

With the whey that is left over from the ricotta I can make mysost. The whey has to cook down for hours and hours till most of the liquid has been removed.


The whey reduced down about half way.


Wish I could upload the smell, its incredibly good. I decided not to reduce it all the way. Its a little on the salty side, I decided to use half of it to make cheese and potato soup and maybe cheese and rice something with the other half, so its in a canning jar and into the fridge for now.

As you can see its pretty much an all day project. But the results are pretty tasty. I think Em & I are going to try our hand at home made rootbeer tomorrow. Yum!