Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

Difficulty Heating Milk for Cheesemaking?

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Previously I’ve used a double boiler method for heating milk during the cheese-making process. It was hard work maintaining the correct temperature and there was always some drift up or down the scale which is not ideal. Additionally, it does not induce the state of calmness that one needs to maintain during a session.

Although I’ve been making cheese at home since 2009, I cannot honestly say that I’d perfected a method of heating milk during cheese-making and keeping it at a constant temperature during the entire process using a double boiler until now. Well, now I believe I’ve cracked the code. I use a precision cooker!

Precision Cooker is a Useful Tool!

I recently discovered an easy method of heating the milk using my kitchen sink and a precision cooker (aka Sous Vide cooker). I was so excited that I made a video about the entire process. https://youtu.be/uDCTTJjVjyQ

Perfect, maybe?

Now, is it perfect? Well, as perfect as it can be for the home cheesemaker without costing the earth. I tend to set the temperature one or two degrees celsius higher than required. This is due to the heat loss from the metal sink and convection lag between the water bath and the milk. It’s not an issue and is easy to account for during the process.

Also, the divider between the two sinks is just narrow enough to screw the precision cooker to without it moving. Our sink only holds my 15 Litre / 4 gallons stockpot with enough water flow to surround it. If I need to make a larger batch of cheese, I would get a bigger pot and use a large plastic tub to hold the water. To aid in water flow underneath, I sit the pot on a trivet.

Recommendations

Originally I purchased an Anova brand precision cooker. It worked okay but emitted a high-pitched whine that was irritating beyond words. It also came across in the audio of my videos, so it was a show stopper for me and I had to stop using it.

However, I then found the Inkbird ISV-200W Wi-Fi Precision Cooker. No noise and about 2 times cheaper than the Anova precision cooker. It has all the same features and works as expected without any fuss. I also control mine via the Android/iOS app that you can download for free.

It can be set to Celcius or Fahrenheit and you can get the Australian/New Zealand ISV-200W version here or the US/Canada ISV-200W version here.

I’ve used mine for about four years now without issues and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to take home cheese making to the next level with this set-and-forget heating tool!

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Brine for Cheese Making

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Salt is an essential ingredient in cheese.  It expels whey, slows the conversion of lactose to lactic acid and preserves the cheese.  It also adds flavour and helps form a rind.  The oft-quoted “Cheese is milk’s leap towards immortality” would not be so, if it was not for salt.  Brine for cheese making is an essential ingredient in many cheese recipes.

There are two ways to add salt to the curds before maturing a cheese.  One method is to add salt directly to the curds during milling, and the other method is to soak the pressed cheese in a brine solution.  Cheese like Parmesan, Romano, Feta and Edam are soaked in brine so that the salt is absorbed and preserves the cheese. Others like to brine Caerphilly or Camembert.

So how do you go about making brine for cheese?  Well, it is pretty simple.

Here are the ingredients;

18% Brine for Cheese Making

  • 2 Litres (2 qt) water
  • 450 gm (1 lb) non-iodised Salt
  • 2 Tablespoons White Vinegar to a pH of 4.5-5.0
  • 1 teaspoon Calcium Chloride solution

This makes an 18% brine solution.

Boil the water and then cool it to sanitize it. Add the salt and other ingredients.  When all the salt is added, stir until it is all dissolved.  

I find that this is just enough salt, and the vinegar and calcium chloride stop the cheese from leaching calcium back into the brine.  I then reuse the brine as a washing solution on other hard cheeses to help inhibit mould growth.

Parmesan waiting for the brine to cool.

Just make sure that you cool to room temperature before adding finished cheese.  In fact it is best if both brine and cheese are at the same temperature.  13°C (55°F) is the best temperature at which to brine your cheeses.  I just place the container in the cheese fridge for the duration of brining.

How long do you leave it in the brine?  Well, it depends on the density of the cheese.  A nice hard cheese like Parmesan needs at least 24 hours, however, a 1.2 kg Gouda only needs 12 hours.  Ricki Carol’s cheesemaking.com site recommends the following:

“Cheeses of different densities and shapes will require varying times in the brine. A general rule is 1 hour per lb (450 gm). per each 1 inch (2.5cm) thickness of cheese. A very dense low moisture cheese such as Parma will need more time than a moist open texture cheese.”

If you like you can store the brine for future use in the cheese fridge and you can reuse it over and over again until it gets too cloudy.  Just before you brine another cheese, add another tablespoon of salt to replace that which was absorbed by the last cheese.

I hope this answers the well-asked question of how to make brine for cheese making.

If you have a cheese question, I am more than happy to see if I can answer it.

How to make Dry Jack Cheese

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Dry Jack cheese is considered a grating cheese with similar qualities to Parmesan. It is ivory to pale yellow, nutty and complex piquant flavour. It was first made in 1915 in San Francisco, USA.

What I love about this cheese is that you do not need a special press to make it. All I did was form the curds into a ball shape after draining in butter muslin and tie a knot with twine close to the curds. Then fan the excess cloth out and place a chopping board on top with at least 4 litres of water to press. I used a large 5-litre saucepan filled with water on the top board. It was quite stable and didn’t topple, providing me with an initial pressing of 4 kg / 9 lbs.

After two hours, I swapped to a larger pot and filled it with 16 litres of water to give me about 16 kg / 35 lbs of weight. Because the cheese was fairly flat after the initial press, this large pot did not wobble and was stable overnight.

The rub was a tad messy, but I channelled my inner pre-schooler and had a blast! I have now applied the rub three times and it has kept the mould at bay. It is now ripening in the cheese fridge at 13°C / 55°F @ 85% relative humidity. I hope to age it for about 3 months as it is a lot smaller than the traditional Dry Jack.

I’ve created a Dry Jack Cheese recipe card for you to purchase at Little Green Workshops.

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