Small Batch Cheese Making
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EmailFebruary 27, 2024
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We will be talking about making small batch cheeses: Topics covered will include where to get supplies; some processes, and storage of cheese.
The 2024 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 19-March 1, 2024. This two-week program encompasses many aspects of the agricultural industry and offers a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. While there is no cost to participate, attendees must register to receive the necessary zoom links. Registrants can attend as many sessions as they would like and are also able to jump around between tracks. RUP and CCA credits will be offered for several of the sessions. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Good evening and welcome to the Michigan Ag Ideas to Grow with Virtual Conference. My name is Katie Ockert, and I'm an extension educator in the Community Food and Environment Institute. And I'm based on campus. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this session tonight called Small Batch Cheese Making. Today we'll hear from Mike, who serves as the Michigan State University Extension small ruminant educator in Jackson County. Now let's jump into today's presentation. Mike, the floor is yours. Good evening everyone. My name is Mike Metzger. I am the MSU Extension Small ruminant educator for all 83 counties here in Michigan. In my spare time, I have a commercial dairy. We are the only dairy licensed in the state of Michigan for both cows and goats. We are currently milking two cows. And when I left home this morning, it was 24 goats. Could be more than that by now, especially with the storm getting ready to come through. And we have a non farm creamery, so we make cheese. So, I'm going to talk to you a little bit tonight about making cheese on a small, in a small batch format. We've got this milk. Whether you haul milk in a small tank and enclosed trailer and milk cans. All of it is legal to actually make commercial cheese with. You probably are small enough, you're not doing any of this, But once the milk comes out of the bulk tank and goes into a can, it becomes manufactured grade milk. And it's no longer grade a milk, but you can still make cheese with it. Let's talk about the general composition of milk. Milk by weight is 87% water, 51% lactose, 4% fat, 3.2% protein, and then 0.7% salts, which are minerals and ash. And we'll talk about each and every one of those components here a little bit. Fat is mostly triglycerides. Those are complex fats, greater than 95% of them are triglycerides proteins. There are many different types of cases. It's about 80% of the protein that we find in milk. They coagulate at a ph of 4.6 We'll talk about that in a minute why that's important. You can actually get it to coagulate at a higher ph if you use rennet Caseins exist in very complex structures. These are very complex proteins. Wanted to throw in there that the goats have an A two beta casein. Cows can either have an A one or an A two beta casein. You hear a lot about that. You also hear about kappa casein, which they're starting to put in proofs for cows and that has to do with cheese yield. One is the casein that can cause digestive upset in people. A lot of times I have people come up to me and say, I'm lactose intolerant. But I can do goat. Well, goat milk has lactose in it. Just like cow milk. And it may, I repeat, may have more to do with those proteins than it does with the lactose. Milk also has whey proteins, that's that remaining 20% of the protein. These do not coagulate at 4.6 or due to the action of the enzyme rennet. They are released in the whey. When you make cheese, you have the curds, the hard part, and the whey which is these remaining whey proteins, lactose and milk is the carbohydrate, that's the milk sugar. It's the principal energy source for starter and non starter bacteria. What do I mean by that? When you're making cheese, you introduce a culture or you just have a farm set, that's a culture that can be there. That's what ferments the lactose into lactic acid. And that starts the fermentation process, the separation of the curds in the whey. The lactose is soluble and it's lost with the whey, there will be a small amount of lactose that will remain in that cheese after the fermentation into lactic acid, but that is usually lost during the aging process. Again, people that are lactose intolerant should be able to consume aged cheeses because those possess little risk for lactose still being there. It's all been fermented into lactic acid and removed with whey or is lost during the aging process. Then we have the salts, which are minerals and ash. About two thirds of that is the calcium and half of its phosphorus, and these are bound to the casein structure. Those are part of the protein that stays in the cheese itself. What are the steps in cheese making? Pasteurization. And I put maybe. We'll talk about why, setting the milk, cutting the curd, cooking the curd, whey, removal, curd knitting, salting, and pressing. We'll talk about all of those. Why would we pasteurize? Well, if you pasteurize, you can eliminate any unwanted bacteria. Many people want to make raw melt cheeses and that's fine. But sometimes you'll have contamination, whether it's from coli form, Ecoli, whatever your cheese is going to be ruined. When you cut into that cheese, it's full of all kinds of little tiny holes and that can be caused from a contamination. If you're making cheese commercially to sell, some of those can be raw, but if they're a soft cheese like cottage cheese or Chèvre or even like a Camembert, those have to be pasteurized. Even if you're a raw melt creamery. There was a sheep creamery here in the Lansing area. A while back, they didn't have a pasteurizer. All of their cheeses were raw, but their creamery was still licensed. And even to sell raw cheeses, you have to be a licensed creamery. Most cheese require a milk to be at a certain temperature for the culture to grow. For that you'll follow the recipe. Chèvre is like 70 degrees. If you're making a cheddar that's more like 90 degrees, that'll be in the recipe. What do I mean by setting the milk? You're going to start the coagulation process by either using a starter culture or if it's just a straight milk with no starter culture, you'll just put the rennet in. Otherwise culture, that can be a direct culture from a cheese already, you can buy these freeze dried cultures and I'll show you the website for that. And here in a little while. In many cheeses, the rennet remains active during the ripening process and it will influence the taste and texture of the final cheese. You don't have to use calf rennet, we use a bacterial rennet that's still considered vegetarian. For people that want to be vegetarian so they can still do cheeses. The acid is coagulating the acid. Coagulated cheese uses very little rennet. You can coagulate cheese just by using lemon juice or vinegar. Oftentimes you'll see mozzarella recipes that call for coagulating the cheese that way. Or you can introduce a starter culture that will rapidly decrease that ph and start the coagulation process. Like I said before, milk coagulates at that ph of 4.6 Then if you add rent, you can change that to make it even higher if you just coagulate cheese using ph at that ph of 4.6 That's a very fragile curd. Curd can't contract, it can't expel any more moisture. That usually results in a very soft cheese with high moisture. That would be your cottage cheeses, your farmer's cheese, your, your cream cheese, rennet coagulation. Sometimes we'll refer to that as a sweet curd. You can put this rent in and it doesn't take very much. Our pasteurizer, usually we run around a 35, 40 gallon batch of cheese. And with the rennet that we use, you're putting in ten or 12 milliliters. Usually it doesn't take very much. Again, that causes the milk to coagulate at a higher ph. What do we mean by cutting the curd? Well, there's the curd knife here. There are several different kinds of curd knives. They're not cheap. What happens is when you cut the curd, this cheese is set. You'll see a small layer on the surface of fluid and then the curd down below. You run your cheese knife through cutting it. Those are probably 1 " wide. So you're cutting the curd that increases the surface area that allows for more expulsion of way. So you get a harder cheese, you get a cheese that's not as wet that facilitates uniform heating or cooking. Many recipes like a cheddar or even a Feta, those require the curd to be cooked to some temperature for some period of time. As you heat that cheese, that's where the curd or the moisture is released from the curd. That's a major control point for controlling the amount of moisture that's going to be in the final cheese because you can't just press all of that cheese out or drain, excuse me, all of that way out without cooking some of the way out through one of these processes. I talked about cooking the curd. You cook it at a specific temperature, for a specific length of time, stirring it, that facilitates shrinkage, weigh removal, curd moisture, and that can also stop the activity of that starter culture. This is our pasteurizer. You can see the curds floating in the way that's heating back up, stirring to uniformly heat it again to a certain temperature for a specific amount of time. How do we remove the way? If you go back to this picture, I don't know if you can see my pointer, but over here you can put in a screen that goes down to the valve at the bottom and Then you can drain the way while saving most of the curd that way, or you can put it in a mold. Oftentimes we'll line these molds with cheese cloth to catch more of the smaller curd. If we're doing a camonbar like you see here on the right, that's just a small basket. You put the curd in there, you fill it to the top, and then you flip. And you take an empty basket and flip it into an empty basket, so it actually flips the curd over. You. Do that every 15 minutes for, I don't know, ten times or whatever. And then you get these nice little cammon bears over here that you then age and they grow the fuzzy mold. You can do that by draining the vat. You can dip the curd out and place it in these molds that permanently removes the way from the curd. Some cheeses will require you to remove the way and then put water back in and cook it again. It actually permits the curds to coalesce and into a homogeneous bass. When we make Chèvre , pasteurize the milk, you get the temperature down to seven. You put the culture in for half an hour, then you go back and you stir the way in and you let it set for 24, 36 hours at about 70 degrees. Then you'll go in and cut the curd ladle. Or use actually a measuring cup to pour the curd and weigh mixture into these cheese bag cloths, which then hang for 12, 14 hours. And you get this nice clear way down below and you'll have the curd left. That's another way to drain the curd. Knitting the curd is taking those curd particles, usually at a warm temperature. You can get continued starter growth, controls the moisture in the texture with a cheddar. Actually you have the curd in the vat and it'll be this great big lump and you turn it over in a warm at and it keeps it warm and going, and coalesces those curd particles. Then salt salting is done different ways. If we go back to the cheddar, these are cheddar cheese curds. When you're making cheddar, you actually put the salt right into the curds. And during the cheddaring process, which is again that heating of those curds, you cook the salt right into the cheese. Other cheeses, you do it in a brine or you dry salt. The outside of it' seen done in a brine. Seen where you just take your block of feta and you roll it in salt. You can't make cheese without salt. Unsalted cheese, I get *** that all time. Well, do you have any unsalted cheese? I have to control my salt intake. Unsalted cheese is very bad. I personally don't like the taste it again. The salting facilitates the control of the moisture, It helps pull some of the weight out of the curd, and it improves the body and the textures of those cheeses. It will arrest the starter growth, the growth of the starter, the activity, and the acid production from those starters. It inhibits the growth of contaminating organisms, influences ensomatic activity during ripening, and enhances flavor. That's the big thing, is that it enhances the flavor of the cheeses. There are many safeguards in making cheese for these contaminating organisms. You have the low ph, the acid can kill them. You have the salt that can help, and then the aging process as well aged cheeses. Raw cheese has got to be aged for at least 61 days if you're going to sell them raw. These are wheels of a French style thumb made with cow milk. I'm guessing because of the yellow color, we get a lot of yellow color from our milk. In the summer when the cows are in pasture that have been through the brine aging, we'll have five gallon buckets of a saltwater brine. They sit in that brine for 14, 16 hours, and then you take them out, you air dry them. When we age, we vacuum seal and they go into the cold room, which is kept at about 48 degrees pressing. These are a mold you would put your curds, the bottom part of this mold and you can wrap it in cheese plot if you want to save some of the smaller curd lid on there. And if it says to press it at 25 pounds, oftentimes we'll take 25 pounds of barbel or weights or whatever, and set them on top of it. You can actually stack these up and that will put 25 pounds of pressure on there. You don't have to have an expensive cheese press to do this. Pressing causes compaction of the curd into a solid form. That's your nice hard wheel of cheese that you can cut again, that helps dry out some of the moisture. It helps to shape it, and it gives it some of that texture. This is, I can't even say Monterey Jack. Pepper Jack, excuse me. It's an Jack with peppers in it. So you can add those into the curd before you put it into the molds and press it and you will get the shape and stuff. Let's talk about starter cultures. There are different types of starter cultures. The Mesophilic Lactococcus Lactis are the optimum growth at 77, 90 degrees. They'll be killed at anything over about 104 typical, sending temperatures about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The principal function of these is to ferment that lactose into lactic acid. These are used for a whole variety of cheeses, cheddar, Cheshire, Colby, jack types, cammebert, blue, brie, feta, Harvarti, gouda, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and other acid coagulated cheeses. That's one of your main types of these mesophilic starter cultures. Thermophilic, these are a little bit hotter, 95 to 105, maximum temp of about 140 before those will be killed. That's the Streptococcus thermophilus. The lactobacillus is not quite as, or a little bit warmer. Excuse me, 109 to 113. I almost always use those two. In combination, it produces almost a yogurt like flavor. The principal function of these cultures is, again, lactose, can't talk tonight. Indolctic acid. The varieties Italian cheeses and your Swiss type cheeses, whether it's an appenzeller or gruyere or just a plain Swiss, those are the types of cultures you would use for that. Then there's other cultures, gas and flavor producing these ferment, lactose into lactic acid. Again, they take citrate into carbon dioxide and diocetal that produces some of these strong gases, like a Swiss cheese, where you get the big holes. They've added some of these starters to make these holes, variate cheeses. Again, the other ones. Some of these other ones. Again, gouda, different temperatures on the mesophilic here, can't say this propionibacterium does not ferment lactose. That's the one that adds the natural flora or it may be present as a natural or can it be added and that's the one that's put in the air bubbles in the. Where do I get these cultures? There are different types. There's a mother culture, so that's like a fresh culture that you keep growing on your farm or in your facility. You can have these frozen concentrates, or you can just let whatever's on the milk be your starter culture. If you're using these direct concentrates, get Culture.com They get Culture.com and they have direction. Dairy connections for the commercial guys get Culture.com is one of the places, not the only one, but one of the places you can get the cultures. They have recipes, they have lots of books. This is an MM series. It's a mesophilic culture for soft ripened cheeses such as Brie, Camembert, Harvarti, gouda, chevre. Those types of cheeses, you would just keep this in your freezer and put in very small amounts, whatever they're all the concentration, all of them is included on the label. So you have to figure out the concentration to figure out how much you need. Because your recipe will call for a number of Ocula that's based on the concentration of those cultures. But they're freeze dried, you can just keep them in your freezer. They keep for a really long time. This is a camembert. I showed you those pictures of the camembert earlier. It's a ripened cheese, you get this fuzzy mold on the outside. And then the longer it ages go, if you will, the middle of that cheese becomes it's a pretty good seller for us, we do those with milk. At this point, I would be happy to entertain questions if you have them. Here's a really good book if you're in, that can be bought off Amazon that can be bought in many different places if you're interested in making these farmstead cheeses. Truly, the word farmstead just means that the milk is produced on the same farm that the cheese is made. Any questions? Whole milk is 3% fat. Whole milk you buy out of the store is 3.25% or something like that. Yes. If you're using milk out of the store to make cheese, oftentimes you'll have to add calcium chloride to help make the curd a little bit stronger, harder curve, that's easier to handle. And then it says, why did you show 4% Well, to be honest with you, milk from my goats is over 4% Milk from my cows is over 4% That's just an average milk in the whole. Milk in the store is standardized at 3.25% Is there any metal that one should avoid using cheese milking? I would suggest that you use either stainless steel for your pans, your buckets, or plastic plastic equipment, plastic stirs. I would not use cast iron or anything like that. Aluminum is probably okay. I'm going to take that back. I would stick with stainless steel. All right. It looks like we've answered all the questions that have been submitted, both in the chat and the Q and A. Thank you so much, Mike, for your time tonight. And it looks like we've got a couple more questions that just rolled in. Sure. Are there any issues with using glass? There's no issues at all with using glass. You want something that's not porous, so the one below is can use wooden utensils. You can just make sure they're clean, you're not cross contaminating with something actually aging. There's been this huge issue in license creameries whether you can even age on raw boards or unpainted boards you can, but there's a bigger chance of contamination if you're using wooden utensils. I would stick again with plastic or stainless steel. My contact information E mail me a metzgerm at MSU dot edu. if you have any questions I'd be happy to respond to those. How do I get more cheese and less weight that is basically based on the composition of your milk? That depends on the season. We're not standardizing our milk in our creamery. And I have goats that are freshening right now, we get more cheese out of the same amount of milk this time of year when the fat and the protein are a little higher. In the wintertime, we see that drop off when things get cold and you get a little less fat and protein in your milk. That has to do with more with the concentration of your milk or the composition of your milk. It can also have if your curd is really fragile and you're losing that curd with the way, that's where adding some calcium chloride might help you a little bit. Jersey cows better, more fat. We milk Brown Swiss because we've found that fat to protein percentage is better for cheesemaking because it takes the fat and the protein, not just the Fate cheese. You have to have the correct percentages. There are a lot of people that just use jerseys and that's fine. But we fund for our purposes that the brown Swiss do a little bit better because of that fate percentage. Are any licenses required to make and sell? Absolutely. We have five permits with them. Dart to do what we do. The dairy farm has to be licensed. Then you have to have led hauler sampler to take a sample of that milk, which then has to be tested for antibiotic. Every tank of milk, even though I produced the milk, has to be for antibiotic. We have an antibiotic if you're going to take it to make sure they're running a test that's approved for goats. We ran into that problem years ago and lost a whole bunch of cheese. Then if you haul milk any distance, you have to have a licensed milk hauling vehicle. Can be those cans in the back of a pickup truck covered, of course, or that bulk tank. And that trailer was also licensed. That's four. And then the fifth one is the creamery itself has to be licensed. Now, there's nothing that says you can't make cheese for home use. You have to be licensed for that. But if you want to sell it at a farmer's market or retail or restaurants, then yes, you have to be licensed. Is there something in the chat? No, sir. No, but what do the licenses require? So if you go into the Mdardairy Division site, there are specific It's pretty specific as far as the creamery, you know, it has it's basically a commercial kitchen. I mean, it doesn't have to have the oven or stuff. But if you're going to have a pasteurizer, the pasteurizer has to be licensed. We get visits every three months from Memdard to make sure that the Pasteurizer, which has a recording device on it, that the temperature that that's recording is correct. Because when they come and do every six month inspection, they look at those recording charts to make sure that all of your pasteurized cheeses were held at what we've pasteurized, which is 145 degrees for half an hour. You have to have a pen recorder that records the temperature of the milk in the air space. You have to have a hand sink in there. You have to have a three compartment sink in there. The walls have to be basically FRP or a non porous, cleanable wall. They can't just be painted dry wall or something like that. Of course, for a dairy, you have to meet the same requirements as the dairy farms. The milk inspector is the same one that does all the dairy farms. If you have more questions, feel free to contact me about that. It's not an easy process, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a hard process either. They also, because we're on a well, because it's considered a public well, they do a well sample every six months to make sure that when that's part of your licensing, to make sure your well is not contaminated. Cost of licenses? Cost of licenses. I think the farm itself is 50 bucks. I think the creamery is 250 bucks. It's I have a little bit of a problem with. It's the same thing that like play or prairie farms or whatever, pays to license creameries bet we spend 500 bucks a year on the cost of all the licenses. All right. Well, thank you everyone for your time.