Cheese making/Experiment 1

Date

• Doodle for deciding on date

Plan

We should make at least:

• One cheese with normal whole milk (control to check our cheese-making ability)
• One cheese using dried casein, lactose powder and ghee (control to check if micelles will form when re-constituting milk from its base ingredients, and if so, if the cheese will be any good).
• One cheese using dried casein, normal sugar and vegetable oil (palm oil)

We could also make a cheese with lactose-free milk and add sugar, but I think lactose-free milk actually still has some amount of lactose (should research), so we may need some way of completely getting rid of the lactose before we can try this.

If everything doesn't just magically work the way we hope then we can experiment with different methods of mixing to encourage micelle formation.

Stuff we gots

• Microbial chymosin
• One large pot (that will still fit on a stove)
• Stove
• Food thermometer
• MgCl
• Cheese cave
• Cheese press (well, it should be done by the time we need it)

Stuff we needs but don't gots

• Lots and lots of salt
• Curd-cutter or very long knife.
• Cheese cloth
• More large pots (I have only one).
• Whole milk, not raw milk but pasteurized and not ultra-pasteurized (two gallons)
• Ghee
• Lactic acid bacteria (buy at Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley)
• Lactose powder
• Vegetable oils, ideally the highest melting-point palm oil we can get (apparently PMF: Palm Mid-Fraction is the best), but cocoa oil could also work. Coconut oil may work but is less likely to give good cheese due to its low melting point. I think we might be able to find this in berkeley bowl or whole foods in the form of vegan butter replacements, but we should check melting points experimentally.

We need some folks to commit to buying and bringing some of these things.

Stuff as would be nice to have but ain't strictly needed

• pH probe
• Temperature controlled heat source for the big pot

Raw milk vs. pasteurized

The reason for not using raw milk is:

"If using raw milk the milk must be of highest quality because The low acid of this cheese will not protect against late fermentation from unwanted bacteria during aging. In Holland a nitrate is added but not allowed here in the US." from http://www.cheesemaking.com/Gouda.html

Since it's another thing that can fail, we should avoid it until we're more experienced.