A cheese making failure

Even after we read all the instructions and thought we'd followed each step accurately, L. and I discovered we were sadly mistaken that making cheese would be as easy as it sounded.

It is apparently not called an "art form" for nothing.

My interest in cheese-making started after reading a story in Hobby Farms Magazine. L. agreed with me that it sounded very do-able and she was as eager to try making it as I was.

So I made an inquiry at Whole Foods in Portland about rennet, which I needed per the magazine recipe. I got an offended-type look and a decisive, "We do not carry that product in this store." I figured it was something animal-related based on the clerk's reaction so I went online to find it.

Turns out that rennet, a key ingredient in modern day cheese making along with food-grade citric acid, is actually an animal byproduct.

Rennet is an extract from the fourth stomach of young ruminants, such as cows, goats, and sheep. This extract contains a number of enzymes which are designed to help these animals digest their mother's milk, and when added to milk, rennet will cause the milk to coagulate, forming the curds and whey which are so essential in the cheesemaking process. Humans have been working with rennet for thousands of years, and it is typically readily available in stores which carry cheesemaking supplies; it can also be made at home, if you happen to have access to the necessary ingredients. You can read the rest of the explanation here...

This explained the unpleasant look I was given by the guy at Whole Foods. He must have been a vegan...

Anyhoodle, I found a cheese making supply store online, www.cheesemaking.com, that offered a kit that included all the ingredients I needed to make several pounds of cheese. It was less than $30 and even included step-by-step directions and a trouble-shooting guide. The only thing the kit did not include was the milk.

I ordered it.

The recipe was very precise in the instructions when making cheese in the home kitchen.

* Use stainless steel pots (no reactive metal as that will have a negative effect on the chemical reaction to form the cheese).

* Use water that does not have chlorine in it (they recommend distilled if you're not sure)

* Use milk from a local dairy that has not been processed using high heat. Ideally that's raw milk.

I had the first two things covered but the milk required a visit to Smiling Hill Farm. I know Smiling Hill makes cheese so I figured they would have the type of milk I needed. I spoke with a very knowledgeable person at the farm store and learned that dairies in Maine can not sell raw milk (per public health concerns and is actually illegal to do so). It has to at least be pasteurized.

It turned out that "Creamline" is as close as I can get to purchasing raw milk commercially (I need to chat with some 4H friends with dairy cows this summer to give me some raw milk).

Smiling Hill's Creamline is pasteurized but it is not homogenized (read more about the difference in these processes on howthingswork.com so it has a "cream plug" at the top of the bottle.

L. liked that plug a lot and licked each bottle's neck clean of it.

We followed the directions, really we did, but the cheese never got to the "ball" form.

We had a pot full of substance that looked a whole lot more like vomit.

Even though I thought we'd followed the directions correctly, there are some things now I'm second-guessing.

* My stainless steel pot may have been too big. We made sure the milk mixture was heated to the correct temperature but the extra space in the pot may have cooled the milk too quickly and caused things not to react correctly at a key point in the process. I have a smaller pot we're going to try next time.

* The metal slotted spoon we used could have caused a problem. I'm not sure now if it really is stainless steel or not.

* We might not have used enough rennet. Cutting a small pill-like disc in to quarters is not all that accurate and I think we'll use the largest of the quarter cuts next time. Or maybe use a half piece and see what happens. The directions said you can play around with this ingredient a bit based on how it works at your home kitchen.

I think now I understand a bit better why a lot of even the DIY-types don't make cheese at home. But L. and I have not given up. We're going to try it again sometime soon.

Anyone ever try to make their own cheese? Have any tips for us?