I've tried to make chevre a bunch of times but it just doesn't seem to come out right. The last two batches have been a mix of rubber and goo. Am I not letting it set long enough? The first time I made it it came out really sour.
Any suggestions would be great.
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I have a recipe that uses cultured buttermilk. I haven't tried it myself because I have had a supply of culture, but I have only 1 more packet, so I will be using buttermilk soon. =) I got the recipe from a friend of mine and hers is delicious and so easy! Let me know if you want it!
I have also used the mesophilic culture (from cheesemaking.com) and then rennet and it works very well! The family loves it! We don't pasteurize our milk so it is all raw and since we were only milking one doe we also had 3-5 days worth of milk to make the chevre...
I used to use the cheesemaking.com chèvre culture, and it didn't work for me if I tried to use raw milk, so I always pasteurized it. I now make my chèvre from scratch using separate culture and rennet and have no problem making it with raw milk.
When using that culture, I would let the milk set for 10-12 hours before putting it into molds. It usually took about 6 hours to drain. Although I have not had your particular problem, it sounds like you are not letting the curds set up long enough. Sounds like only the outside of the curd mass is draining, hence the rubbery outside and soft inside. If the curds are not solid enough, the tiny particles can clog your cheesecloth and stop drainage. I quit using cheesecloth after only one or two batches and have used the plastic chèvre molds for the past nine years. If you've got the direct set cultures, go ahead and continue to use them, but once they're gone, I'd suggest just moving to separate mesophilic culture and rennet. It is so easy. I can't believe I didn't start doing it sooner. I actually get more consistent results than with the direct set culture.
Are you pasteurizing your milk at all? I know Deborah has had problems making chevre from raw milk. I've always pasteurized mine so I don't have any input there.
When I make mine I have the milk at 23C (73F) and add the starter culture. I leave it sitting for 5-7 hours to ripen and then add the rennet (coagulant). I then let it sit for another 5-7 hours (sometimes overnight depending on when I started it), and then I hang it in draining bags for about 12 hours. I do stir it slightly in the bags to make sure the interior drains properly.
I've just got my commercial cheesemaking equipment running so I'm going to have to start being precise with my times, none of this "5-7 hours or maybe overnight" stuff that I've been doing in my kitchen:-)
I took a week-long cheesemaking class at the Western Dairy Centre in Utah and I've read a few books on it, and my favourite book is "Goat Cheese: Small-Scale Production" by the Mont-Laurier Benedictine Nuns. It is Canadian so you'd have to convert all your measurements from Metric, but it's basic and useful.
Hopefully this helps. Although I'm about to go small-scale commercial, Deborah has been making cheese for much longer than me and may have more helpful hints.
There are so many recipes, it's confusing.
I got the Chevre culture from cheesemaking.com. I heat the milk to 86 degrees, add the culture and let it sit for about two minutes then mix it in for a few minutes. Then I let it sit on the counter for about 7 hours when there is about a 1/4" of whey on the top of the curd. Then I drain it and hang it in cheese cloth on the counter till I get the consistency I want. Unfortunatly after I drain it the stuff on the outside of the cheese cloth is hard and rubbery and the stuff on the inside is like jello.
This last batch I only had three quarts of milk not the for the culture calls for so that might have had something to do with it. My goat only produces about 1/2 a quart a day so I'm using a mix of milk that is anywhere from 1-8 days old.