Cheese making/Experiment 3

Goal

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Test production of cheese from re-assembled milk. Re-assembled milk is to be made from

• micellar casein powder
• lactose
• salts
• ghee

Background

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Production of cheese requires fats, sugars and salts as well as the casein protein. Our molecular biology team is currently developing a yeast-based casein production platform, but to achieve a product that is completely vegan the sugars and fats must come from non-animal sources as well. The goal of this series of experiments is to test the use of alternate sugars for the cheese ripening process.

The purpose of Experiment 3 in particular is to test an initial positive control: production of cheese from re-assembled milk. This re-assembled milk is produced by combining micellar casein powder, lactose, ghee and a mixture of salts. This expands on the casein solubilization techniques developed in Experiment 2, adding sugars, oils and salts, then ultimately producing cheese from the re-assembled milk.

Methods and results

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Materials Micellar casein powder: "BodyTech 100% micellar casein."

Salts: Research into milk composition indicated this relative composition: protein: fat: lactose sugar:

salts citrate: calcium: phosphate: magnesium:

Methods

Procedure for re-assembly of milk

Milk was re-assembled by heating 500mL of distilled water in an Erlenmeyer flask on a heated stir plate

After addition of all ingredients

Re-assembled milk on heated stir plate, pre sonication

How the sonicator was set up plus the settings on the heated stir plate.

Re-assembled milk immediately before sonication

Re-assembled milk, after about 15 minutes of sonication

Re-assembled milk, after 32 minutes of sonication

Comparison of re-assembled milk before (right) and after (left) sonication.

The cheese making recipe used here attempts to replicate the instructions found a the ["Gouda, A Cheese from the North Country"] page of the cheesemaking.com website.

Discussion

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