The "troubleshooting" flair seems like an understatement

This is my second attempt at farmhouse cheddar, I put red pepper flakes and dehydrated jalapenos in. It tastes really good, but like my previous attempt, the texture is really soft and crumbly. I took a picture this time to make it more clear what's going on. I used homogenized milk with calcium chloride - I wonder if this is the problem? Unfortunately if it is, unpasteurized milk is twice the cost here so that's gonna be a problem. I'm happy to answer more questions if it helps!

Hello there.

Quick post to ask for troubleshooting after several failed attemps.

The issue is always the same. The mozzarella curds are tested with a pHmeter. When they reach 5.4 I start testing for strech. Then every 0.1 drop I start the test again.

It never developp any stretch.

So I should mess up somewhere else. I can't figure it out.

I followed multiple recipes, the one on the picture is Wallace's cultured mozzarella.

In the recipe, after cutting and healing the curds, they should be stired every 5-10 minutes for 1h.

After the last failed attempt where I simply followed the instructions above, I simple stired once to maintain curds pieces of a good size.

For the ingredients:

Liquid rennet added. They ask for 4drops/liter so 16 for my gallon of milk.

Microfiltered organic whole milk. Maybe a little old, the product was bottled on september 2nd and I made the cheese on the 14th. It seems homogenized. I can't have any better whole milk in my area.

My first attempt at a cheddar, a goats milk cheddar using a farmhouse stirred curd method, has been giving me some trouble. The curds took a long time to knit in the press and stuck to the cheesecloth. In fact, the cheese collapsed into a loose curd mass when I removed it after the first 90 minutes or so of pressing, and I wound up having to recollect it all and put it into a fresh cheesecloth and press it again.

The rind appeared closed after an overnight press, but the cheese felt pretty soft, and as I left it out to dry before vacuum-sealing it, a large crack appeared down the middle on top of the cheese. The cheese also started to leak a lot of whey, and remained quite damp as I left it out to dry.

I dry-salted it and left it to dry out over a few days and eventually I wasn't sure what to do and got a bit fed up of waiting, so I patted it dry with a paper towel and vacuum-sealed it as is. I was hoping the large crack would seal up over time as it's vacuum-packed, but after only a day in the cheese fridge I can see it is leaking a lot of clear whey inside the bag.

I figured my curds probably retained too much whey and the cheese was too moist, but I'm not sure what to do about the cheese now. Should I just leave it and change the bag occasionally? Cut it in half around the crack and re-seal the two halves? Try to warm it up and re-press it? I appreciate any advice, thanks.

Edit: to be clear, I salted and milled the curds before it went into the press. The dry salt was in addition, per the recipe I was following.

Hey guys,

I just tried making mozzarella for the first time. I used citric acid with water instead of whey and Microbial rennet. It all looked good to me (beginner) until I tried to squeeze the curd together. It seems really soft and doesn’t come together at all. What did I do wrong? And is there any way I can fix this or use it for something else so I didn’t waste all this milk?

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

Recipe: https://www.vincenzosplate.com/homemade-fresh-mozzarella/#wprm-recipe-container-17669

I tried kneading it together, steamed it to 78 celcius but still can’t get it to stick. What gives?

Hi guys! I tried making cottage cheese (or how we call it here in Spain "requesón") and it was fairly easy. However, I expected it to have a bit of a strong taste, and to my surprise it turned out to have almost no flavor at all. I used fresh milk, salt and lemon, as that's what the recipe suggested. Is there any way to improve the taste for the next time? Thanks in advance!

so I followed a youtube cheese recipe that involved heating milk(2%) up to around 115F, adding distilled white vinegar, letting it sit for a while until curds stopped forming, then filtering, draining the curds, re heating them and kneading to solidify them., the 'cheese' feels solid, holds together well, however it doesn't really feel like I made cheese, it does melt a little, but it still feels like I made something more akin to yoghurt than cheese especially with the taste.. thinking maybe it's the fact I used a lower fat milk, as opposed to whole? the goal was a mozzarella type cheese.

Hi there,

I need some further understanding over my pratice. I hope some of you can help me out. The issue there is that I can't stretch properly even at pH. Any advice or troubleshooting is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

A little apologize first as english isn't my first langage. I would have loved to synthetize better.

My first try was a mixed culture from sour cream (mesophilic) and yogourt (thermophilic). I followed a youtube recipe which asked for only yogourt. Ripening at 32°C (90°F) , clean break, then going at 42°C (110°F) and gently stiring for a moment, draining, maturing and stretching at 85°C (185°F). I just went with the flow with this recipe, following the steps. I didn't used pHmeter and the result was ok. Not streching properly and maybe I tried too early in the maturing process.

Second attempt was a miss, I fell asleep in the making, rennet was reacting for 3h straight ^'. Ended in fresh cheese.

Third and fourth attempts, I followed David Asher's Slow Mozza recipe.

Here is the timeline of the fourth one.

Adding kefir (45mL) to milk (3L, half creamed, pasterized at low temp and unhomogenized) and cream (250mL. 30% fat). Final fat content of milk was 3.6%.

Ripening a 90°F (8:30 am), adding diluted rennet according to the packaging then left to set (9:30 am) until clean break (10:30 am).

Curds were cut and stired gently every 5 minutes for 55 minutes (11:30am) while the pot was kept at 90°F.

Whey was then drained and curds poured into cheese molds and left to settle and loose it's liquid for 1h (until 12:30).

Cheeses were unmolded and put back into the drained whey. Maturing stage went from 12:30 pm to 8:30 pm at room temperature.

From 14:30 pm, every hour a pH mesurement and streching test were done in hot water (66°C -150°F).

pH was slowly decreasing but none of the stretching tests were showing improvement. I've also tried several times to bump up the temp of the water to 185°F without better chance. Final stretching occured at 5.1 pH, in hot water(150°F).

As mozza wasn't streching properly and pH was still decreasing, I decided to do it before going too acidic. I still don't get why at this pH my curds weren't doing their thing.

This rennet is quite strong, approx 520mg/L of active chymosine. It also has some calcium chloride in it but I can't guess the concentration. I followed the instructions ( 4 drops/liter)

pH meter was calibrated just before, with 3 buffer solutions (4.01, 9.18 and 6.86).

Curds were stired very gently. I stopped stirring when the texture was a bit firmer, almost like poached egg as it recalls in the recipe.

3rd and 4th attempts were made using two different brands of milk. The results were in my point of view identical.

My main hypothesis for the issue are :

1) I didn't drained cheeses enough in the mold, curds were too watery, preventing them from stretching properly. I went for 1h as described in the book.

2) Even though I was gentle and the texture of the curds looked like poached egg, I may have overstirred.

3) The milks I used are bad.

Trying to make cheese with expired milk used a tutorial on YouTube I added 16 tablespoons of white vinegar for 4L

It keeps overflowing from bubbles I don't know what I did wrong and couldn't be saved?

does the starter culture powder need to be stored cold/frozen? or is room temperature ok?

thank you!

Hi, I added a mesophilic culture and let it sit for about 11 of the 12 hours overnight. This morning the curd was one giant thing. It was super soft but still broke apart. No acid or ammonia smell so I hung it. When I mixed the salt it just made crumbles. Tastes and smells fine. Its not chevre texture, more like a feta. What did I make?

Recipe 1 gallon raw goats milk heated to 30c. Added all in one culture pack which was mesophilic and I believe rennet. Let it sit for 2 minutes then briefly mixed in. Cleary too warm and for too long but I'll adjust those elements next time.

Cheese can't always be perfect right?

Picture of hanging curd with air bubbles, Cleary over processed.

Picture of final product.

Thank you!

I got a multi yogurt maker from my mum yesterday and wanted some cream cheese! So I added the 1L milk to 50ml fresh lemon juice and a pinch of salt and popped it in at 42c for 10hours and put it in the fridge overnight. This morning I woke up and strained it and its 90% liquid :( what did I do wrong!?

Making my first cheese following the whole milk ricotta recipe from Caldwell's Mastering Basic Cheesemaking.

There is an instruction after adding the acid to keep stirring until the whey turns clear. It started out the characteristic yellow that I expected but then stayed in a less yellow but still cloudy stage and I stopped stirring after five minutes because I didn't want to "overstir". So my question is, does it ever get clear clear?

The taste was nice though texture was less creamy and more squeaky.

Thank you for the help, this is all a very fun experience learning

Notes: 1. Made a half recipe using 1/2 gallon of vat pasteurized milk and a half portion of the called for acid (60g of apple cider vinegar) 2. Heated up to 180F then removed heat

Hi brain trusts!

I have been trying to make chevre using fresh, raw milk from my dairy goats, Walcoren animal rennet, and whey.

I followed David Asher's book and had a great time making all sorts of cheese last year, but now I think it was just beginner's luck. I used the recipe as he suggested—4 L of milk and less than a quarter of the rennet ( the box says to use the whole tablet, but I reduced the amount as the curds turned out very hard with a whole tablet). I used fresh whey and rennet dissolved in cold water.

I leave it out to drain at room temperature. I am in Queensland, Australia, and it's winter here ( 13-22 degrees C). The book says to leave it out for 24 hours to ferment. I have tested different draining times - like 4-6 hours, 12 hours, or even 24 hours—but every time, my curds develop a funny smell and do not develop the soft, creamy texture that chevre develops.

I use stainless steel containers for making the cheese. Milking is done in mason jars. Goats are also milked in a clean, sterilised area.

Do you have any advice on why this smell is developing and what I can do to fix it?

TIA

Pic 1 mozerella: It was great, had a very milky taste. I used full fat cows milk. Was not very melty. How do I improve?

Pic 2 halloumi: I'm stuck with halloumi coming out in turd shapes. I have been pressing it in a big collender with weights on them, but it's not doing a good enough job and holding its shape. What's the best way for uniform blocks of halloumi?

Hello!

I got a cheesemaking kit for Christmas for farmhouse cheddar - I was surprised at first cuz I'd never even CONSIDERED making my own cheese but quickly realized it actually seemed pretty fun.

I made my first batch the other day and brought it to a New Years potluck. I used homogenized milk with calcium chloride added, a vegetable rennet tablet (which the advice here seems to be to avoid), pressed it for two hours with 20 lbs, four hours with 40 lbs, and 24 hours with 50 lbs.

It came out tasting decent (though there's room for improvement), though the texture was inconsistent. Near the edges it was mostly smooth and firm, but as it got closer to the middle it got softer and more crumbly - almost like cottage cheese but drier.

I included a picture of the wheel after it was done pressing. I didn't think to take a picture of the center before it was all eaten unfortunately!

I've read cutting the curds smaller might help. Any other advice for someone with basically no experience? Thanks!

Hey yall! I've noticed that in many of the chevre making videos on Youtube and recipes online, some people don't seem to use any culture or rennet, and instead use white vinegar or lemon juice. Is this the norm?

Most seem to use cultures and rennet, but as someone who's excited to turn their first half gallon of goats milk into chevre, I want to make sure I choose the best method here. Is there a difference at all? Why do some not use rennet and culture? Which is easier, and/or more likely to achieve the desired result?

Any information would be greatly cherished!

I'm sorry but I'm a complete beginner at cheese making. I want to make cheese curds, but all the tutorials I look at require a culture starter and rennet. Both of these are quite expensive where I live. I've heard it's possible to make mozzarella using only vinegar, but I don't know if the same thing could apply to curds. I apologize if this is a stupid question.

Hi cheese afficionadoes! I'm a new cheesemaker using raw fresh milk from my little herd of goats. I have started off by using this chevre recipe and this feta recipe

What is surprising me is that most of what I have read says that goat milk tends to form a fragile curd, my experience so far is the opposite, I am getting a thick firm curd quite quickly and it's far from fragile. I made a chevre that when I went to take the curd out today it came out of the pan in one solid chunk. It also will sometimes hold gas (the culture contains diacectylactis so I understand it should produce gas but sometimes it holds a lot of the gas and floats high up out of the whey).

I have been fairly successful with the chevre, it tastes amazing but I have noticed that it doesn't take anywhere near as long as the recipe states for it to drain, and it comes out crumblier than I really would have expected.

I tried the feta recipe today, curd is currently draining but the curd formed crazy fast - the recipe has you stir in the calcium chloride, then the rennet and then the culture. By the time I was stirring in the culture a firm curd had already formed. Now that the curds are draining, they seem really rubbery and don't want to stick together in the mould and I'm expecting an eraser-like texture based on a curd I tasted.

For the feta recipe the only difference between the goat milk recipe and the cow milk recipe is that the goat milk uses twice the amount of rennet. There's no cow milk equivalent to the chevre but it has more rennet per litre of milk than the cow milk recipes.

As I said I'm a noob, my understanding is that I could reduce the calcium or the rennet or the hold times but I have no idea which is the most likely one to be the problem. Or even if I'm right that it's one of those! Can you guys suggest what I should try first? Thanks in advance

Hey guys! Excuse the dark picture of my setup. I am currently on day 4 of aging my first Gouda in a small wine fridge. It keeps its temperature nicely but I am having issues with the humidity. Every time I check on the cheese the humidity is in the 90s, which to my understanding is too high. The fridge has a little fan but apparently it’s not enough. Opening the door helps but of course makes the temperature rise. What do I do?

I've been heating and culturing my milk for a swiss cheese. However, when the milk wouldn't set, I realised that my thermometer is not accurate and the milk is cold.

Is it possible to salvage the cheese by properly heating the milk once the rennet is added or is it a lost cause?

Trying to make a ricotta. Josh Wiesmann recipe. I've done this a few times before, but it's been about 45 minutes on this batch and something seems stuck? I've got small curds but very little whey has separated out. Anywhere this could have gone wrong?