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Brine for Cheese Making

30/01/2025 By Gavin Webber 24 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Recipes, Video Tutorial Tagged With: Brine, Technique

How to make Dry Jack Cheese

08/03/2024 By Gavin Webber Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Recipes, Video Tutorial Tagged With: Video Tutorial

How to make Ostkaka – Swedish Cheese Cake

23/08/2022 By Gavin Webber Leave a Comment

Time for a curd recipe! Ostkaka would have to be the nicest dessert that I’ve made using curds! Thank you, Sweden.

Ostkaka aka Swedish Cheese Cake is delightfully simple to make if you have some rennet handy. A great winter warmer for those colder months and a good way to use up a lot of milk quickly! Whilst this is not exactly the traditional recipe, it was what I had at hand and it worked perfectly.

Ingredients

  • 4 Litres / 1 Gallon Raw Milk or Pasteurised/Unhomogenised Milk
  • ½ tsp (2.5ml) single strength rennet in ¼ cup of water
  • ¾ Cup All-purpose flour
  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 4 Large Eggs
  • 1 Cup Whipping Cream (35% fat)
  • 50g / 1.76 oz Ground Almonds
  • Jam or berries to serve.

Method

  1. Save one cup of cold milk from the total to mix with the flour to make a soft paste.
  2. Dissolve rennet in non-chlorinated water.
  3. Heat milk to lukewarm, 32°C / 98°F.
  4. Remove from heat, add the soft paste to warm milk and stir in dissolved rennet. Stir for no more than one minute; cover and let stand until firm, about one hour.
  5. Break up the milk mixture and remove the whey. Do not make the curd too dry and treat it with gentle hands.
  6. Preheat oven to 200°C / 400° F.
  7. Mix eggs, sugar and whipping cream.
  8. Add cream mixture to curd, stir well and bake at 200°C / 400° first 30 minutes and reduce to 165°C / 325°F for about 30 more minutes. Use a Pyrex-type baking dish.
  9. Ostkaka should be brown on top and served warm.

Watch the video here; https://youtu.be/dI11NiLryyA

Ostkaka reminded me of bread and butter pudding that my mother used to make. Pleasant memories of my childhood. Everyone in our family enjoyed a hearty slice for dessert.

For more cheese and curd recipes, check out the Recipe video playlist on my YouTube channel.

Filed Under: Recipes, Video Tutorial Tagged With: Recipe

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