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  • April Keller September 27, 2011 at 12:10pm
    Learning a lot.... I did find someone in the area that makes their own cheese. I am going to give them a call and go be a fly on her wall....
  • Deborah Niemann-Boehle September 27, 2011 at 12:01pm
    I've never found starters in any stores except yogurt starter in an Amish store. However, after several years of buying it off the shelf there and having frustrating results, I realized that it was on the shelf and not in the refrigerator where it was supposed to be. I started buying that starter online, and my yogurt has been great ever since. It is really hit-n-miss when you're not buying from cheesemaking supply people. Regular grocery store people or health food store people don't know anything about the product they're selling, so it should not have surprised me that they were storing it improperly. Also, junket rennet in the store is NOT for cheesemaking. The other advantage is that if you have questions, you can call cheesemaking.com, and they can answer your questions, which the grocery store employees can't.
  • April Keller September 27, 2011 at 11:52am
    Would Health Food stores have the starters? What is the difference in Renent  and these cultures?
  • Deborah Niemann-Boehle September 27, 2011 at 11:27am
    It sounds like you are thinking of using store-b0ught buttermilk as a starter culture. If so, I really would not recommend it. So-called "buttermilk" in the store is a concoction of milk and multi-syllabic chemicals and does not contain any live cultures. Even yogurt that claims to have "live" cultures often does not. Commercial cultures are not expensive, and you will get much better results. Cheesemaking.com is a great place for a beginner to start. They have a starter kit for goat milk, which is excellent.
  • April Keller September 27, 2011 at 10:25am
    So I have some time yet. I still have to go get a thermometer and buttermilk for the recipe I found.. Dose anyone have a special recipe they love? All I did was a search and found one. Seems SO easy... can't believe more people don't make their own... course I may think different once I start.
  • Marin Waddell September 27, 2011 at 10:23am

    When I was keeping milk in the fridge I preferred to use it within about 4 days because I found it developed an "old" flavour after that. It wasn't bad at that point, just not as good as recently milked stuff. Probably something to do with the temperature fluctuations in the fridge.

    I'm making cheese commercially now and am saving up a weeks worth at a time but I have a bulk milk tank that keeps the temperature consistent and stirs it frequently. I can taste a very slight difference in the milk when I have a full week's worth in there, but it's not a bad flavour. 

  • April Keller September 27, 2011 at 10:07am
    Kool Ok things I need to know! I have 3 quarts of milk in the fridge now. How old can it be to use? I have 1 1/2 days of milk. A quart in AM and 1 in PM.
  • Marin Waddell September 27, 2011 at 9:42am

    It has to be cooled down. I make my chevre with 23C (~73F) milk (sometimes it does vary by a degree or so, but I aim for 23C). If you added the starter to milk at pasteurizing temperatures it would kill the starter cultures. So yup, cool it down, but not all the way to refrigerated temperatures.

    Oh, and just for clarification, by fresh cheese I mean unaged, not unpasteurized:-)

  • April Keller September 27, 2011 at 8:46am
    Chevre is what I am planning on making. I read on here it is hard to make with fresh milk. So after I pasteurize the milk do i have to cool it down or can i start making the cheese from the already hot milk?
  • Marin Waddell September 26, 2011 at 9:19pm
    If you're making fresh cheese like chevre that you're going to eat immediately then you can use fresh or dried herbs. If you're going to age it at all then you should stick with dried herbs as the water content of fresh could allow bacteria to grow.
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