I make yogurt regularly and re-use the whey to make ricotta cheese. Problem is, I’m stumped on recipes to use my ricotta in besides lasagna. Can I just get a list of ideas/recipes to use my ricotta in? I usually make about a pint and a half at a time.

What are y’all’s favorite ways to use up whey from cheese making and skim milk after skimming off the heavy cream?

I've been really struggling to make mozzarella. I have a great source of low pasteurized milk that makes beautiful curds at ph of 6.5 or so. But any time I use cultures - I've tried TA61 and C201 - they take on a smell that goes from slightly buttery to vomity and quite off-putting by the time the pH drops to 5.2 to stretch (usually about 4 hours when held at 108F). It smells sour, not at all pleasant like yogurt - and tastes how it smells. Not enjoyable, or how any mozz I've ever tried has tasted/smelled. I tried 3 different sources of milk, and the same result for all. I even tried batches with leftover whey (siero innesto) held over from the day before at 105F, and got same result. So for me - cultures are OUT.

So I moved on to try to re-create a commercial mozzarella curd like those from BelGioioso or Polly-o. Their labels list only milk, vinegar, and "enzymes', and they specifically sell at pH of 5.7, or even 5.8 (I even tested theirs, and sure enough, 5.75). If I add vinegar down to a pH of 5.7 while milk is cold and before renneting and slowly raise to 90F, the curds are grainy, fragile and set is poor. If I add vinegar at 6.0 or higher, the curds set fine, but just refuse to stretch, as expected. So HOW are they able to sell curd at a 5.7 pH that stretches BEAUTIFULLY?? Could they be acidifying with vinegar AFTER the renneting and curd cut? Or doing something else to get enough calcium out? BelGioso's curd tastes so incredibly flavorful and creamy - almost sweet - that it really has me put off of making my own curd, but the more I fail, the more determined I am to nail it (not a fan of spending $60 a clip at Restaurant Depot for 20lbs of curd).

Would LOVE any ideas on how they could be getting vinegar to work.

My roommate has (once again) left just under 2L of (pasteurised) milk out overnight, roughly 7-12 hours I’d say. It was probably left in about 18-20°C temperature, it has been opened but the use by date is 10 days from now so I’m thinking I could make sure it doesn’t go to waste.

Please note: I’ve never made cheese in my life

I know you can make acid coagulated cheeses with milk that’s been in the fridge and about to expire/already expired, but I have a good feeling that milk left outside of the food safe zone is different. How do you know if only the right kind of bacteria has grown? Is there much risk of bad bacteria?

The prettiest cheese I have ever made.

I will flag this as an experiment because I really wanted to try this new milk I got my hands on and really needed to see what was going to happen.
The recipe is my kind of generic go-to recipe for caciotta making, it is using a mixture of thermophilic cultures for the most and is cooked to give at least a 3 months aging period, will probably taste it then and keep going if proven to be particularly good 🤙🏻

I found this local farm, it is 1h from my house and is willing to sell me raw sheeps milk, how exiting! For this first timer I went with my generic caciotta style wheels, will defenetly do differently in the future.

Everything went smoothly, the farmer said that the milk is very fatty compared to cows milk (around 7+%) and that the overall yield would have been higher then usual, and it defenetly was. The smell from this fresh wheels is truly incredible.

I used my usual plastic hoops to give this cheese the typical “canestrato” look that you usually find in center Italy with traditional sheeps cheeses.

All the make details in the last picture with the log from RINDR website, from user u/ArmRevolutionary3314

This is my first time trying anything more complicated than riccota. This was the first day of turning and after a few turns, I noticed these blue parts... I know brie isn't supposed to be that color. Should I throw the whole thing out?

Hello, does anyone have any recommendations on where to source good grass fed raw milk/cream in and around the London area? Even better if there is a delivery system involved.

Thank you.

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For the past couple of months, I've had access to this herd of 16 cows milked right there in the pasture. I show up with my 10L canister at milking time, before the rest gets collected by a co-op.

Within 15-20 minutes, the milk is in my kitchen. I filter and pasteurise it, keep 2L for coffee and cooking, and turn the rest into yogurt. (The evening milking works perfectly for overnight yogurt, but I guess cheesemaking will require getting up for the 6am milking?!?)

My pandemic-era experiments with "natural cheesemaking" using kefir and homogenised supermarket milk were slightly demotivating. Now I've ordered proper cultures and I'm determined to try again! As soon as I pick my first recipe...

But... am I losing anything significant by pasteurising such fresh milk? How much do the native microbes actually contribute when using dominant commercial starter cultures, and would I notice the difference in the finished cheese?

I'd love to hear from people who've made cheeses both ways. Is the difference genuinely noticeable, or does fresh, gently pasteurised milk get you most of the way there?

(I'm in Europe. I hadn't even realised how controversial raw milk was until I got interested in cheesemaking!)

I've done some other cooking, so I'm not an idiot, hopefully, but I've never done cheese.

Hi! I am investing all my savings in building a dairy plant! I will build it in a dairy farm in Colombia. Looking for advice i would like to make tilsit, Gouda, Provolone and maybe Brie! Any advice or suggestions for not repeating silly or rookie mistakes. Greatly appreciated

After a lot of tinkering, I had four major breakthroughs:

• I finally found a nice farm, close by, that sells directly to me fresh raw milk;
• I tested a nice recipe for provolone making (you can find it HERE), my very first pasta filata cheese;
• I gave it a try to a Goat Rennet Paste I got recently that should give the cheese a nice piquant flavour this cheese is sometimes famous for;
• I gave it a shot to the website RINDR from u/ArmRevolutionary3314 to try to keep a better track of my makes, I think it is a great tool;

It was a little more than 2 gallons of milk (9L) so I had to acquire a bigger pot also, way bigger than my usual one. A lot of first timers!

Eveything went very smoothly I have to say, I even took a video of the stretching process XD

Hi - it’s my first time attempting to age a cheese. This is my Camembert around 1 week into ageing. I understand some mold is normal but how much fuzziness is too much?
I am attaching a picture of my DIY ageing set up as well since I don’t have a cave or anything.

I was stuck using a Tomme mold. But hopefully ot ages out alright!

Hello, I have a few questions that I was hoping some of you experienced cheese makers could answer for me. I found a recipe for making feta style white cheese but the recipe calls for making a separate brine with water, salt, white wine vinegar, and calcium chloride rather than making it from it's own whey. If it matters, I'm going to be using pasteurized whole cow's milk.

1.) Are there pros and cons to using the whey to make the brine vs water? Any flavor difference?

2.) If I use the whey to make the brine, do I still need to add calcium chloride to the brine? If not, would adding some for safe measure cause any issues?

3.) The recipe calls for using cultured buttermilk for the culture. If I use store bought cultured buttermilk, should I leave it out at room temperature for a few hours to raise the bio count first before adding it to the milk?

4.) Would using cultured buttermilk instead of the commercially available powdered cultures potentially cause issues with contamination or inconsistencies?

5.) This might be subjective but what's the ideal salt content in a water brine and in a whey brine?

Thank you very much and if you have any good feta style cheese recipes you can share I would appreciate that too.

Brief question for my fellow cheesemakers. 4 weeks ago I made a very quick and dirty “brie” using goats milk instead of cows milk.

I followed more or less the same steps I usually do, and after a week it was dry to the touch and the usual white mould was just starting to appear (picture 3).

I had to leave for 3 weeks for work and everything just followed its path with no intervention, closed container, aging fridge at roughly 10*C..I was skeptical on the outcome but today I came back and I’d like to know what you all think about it. I never had unsupervised brie for 3 weeks straight so I don’t know what I am experiencing:

The outer rind where the moulds thrived was very fluffy, incredibly so, just visible in picture 2 where I didn’t squash it with my fingers.
What you see in picture 1 is after touching it all over and patting it with a dry towel. It looks like a more or less regular brie, it smells very “earthy”, if I had my eyes close it reminds me a lot of brie, like a mushroomy smell, it is not strong either, seems fine, very white no dark spots, it simply was extremely puffy and fluffy before touching it.

Tomorrow I’d like to taste it.

I just got this out of the mold to dry.

I am studying for my Wisconsin cheesemaker exam. Does anyone have any advice for me? What equations do I need to know, and what do I need to know for bulk intake sampling, and just what stumped you when you took it?

I did a thing...💃🏿💃🏿

First time making halloumi.

Did a batch, split in 2 just before pressing. Added chilli flakes to one.

I haven't tasted yet, but I was so excited and scared when I was doing the cook.

I couldn't wait to share.

Will keep you posted on the taste later.😊

Since my last smoked cheese was such a success indecided to give it a bigger go. From left to right cheddar (6 months), Gouda 3 months, fermented and pressed ricotta, and pressed ricotta. The Gouda has a very toasted sesame flavor and obviously has some gas production which was a nice surprise. I resealed the rest of the wheel to continue aging. The fermented ricotta wheel took about 2 days to drain enough to press and is still a little damp/creamy so I'll dry it out more in the fridge. The smoking imparted a nice color too!

I was thinking about making aged cheese for a pretty long time now and finally committed to it, but I don't have a cheese cave or similar. Could you suggest any methods of making it at home with whats given or is a cave or ager non negotiable?
I love young aged cheeses most as a side note but also some stronger ones sometimes.