Making Basic Cheese (Part 2 Pressing)

Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds & whey...

Hey!  Welcome back.  You decided to join us on the continuation of our journey in making basic cheese. Anyone can do this. Believe me, we're nothing special and, you're about to see, we use the simplest of means to get the job done. Okay, cheese heads, let's do this thing:

Yesterday, we left off where we had poured most of the whey off of the curds.  In the photo below, we're adding a Tablespoon of kosher salt to the curds and we stir that up nicely to evenly distribute the salt.

Adding the NaCl

We have a special basket that you'll see further down that has holes in it like a colander.  What we're going to do now is further press more whey out of the curds in our crude, homemade press.  We line the basket with muslin cloth and scoop handfuls of the curds into the cloth lined basket.

Scooping out curds and putting them in the basket...

Okay, with a little Cajun ingenuity or redneck engineering, I made a cheese press with a Gumbo pot and a bungee strap.  Let me explain a little more.  In the bottom of the pot, I've turned a plate upside down.  I then sit the cloth-lined basket of curds on top of the plate and neatly fold the excess cloth on top of the basket to completely cover.

I measured the inside diameter of the basket, allowing for 3/4 inches of 'play' between the disk and the basket and cut out the disk of plywood.  I put it in a Ziploc bag (for food safety) and placed it on top of the basket of curds.  The disk is what's known as my 'pusher.'    

A Redneck Cheese press made from a Gumbo pot

When I say pusher, that's exactly what it will do.  The disk, with pressure added, will push down on the curds and will make the remaining whey exit the basket.  The Gumbo pot will catch that additional whey and we'll give it to our hens.  They love it! Note that in order to get some pressure, I've placed two cans on top of the pusher. These cans are cans of Ripe (Black) Olives.  I love these bad boys and can eat a can or more at a single sitting.  As kids we used to put one on the end of each of our fingers and snack on them - but I digress.  You can use any can or block or any other object for this task.

Redneckedness on display

And here we go.  Now you can see how it works.  The bungee strap pulls down on the cans and the pusher evacuates excess whey from the curds.  This is not an exact, scientific, but we're making Basic Cheese. Different types of cheeses require different pounds of pressure for specific times.  We'll show you that process a little later. We set our Gumbo Pot cheese press out of the way and will let it press overnight.  If you could peer down in the pot, you would already see whey starting to collect in the bottom of the pot.

I envision Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation using something like this to make cheese.

The next day we loosen the bungee straps and unwrap the raw cheese.  What have we here?  Some fresh, raw, uncured cheese!  It's fine to snack on now, if you'd like.

It's not easy being cheesy

You can see the cheese by the basket.  Now you can get an idea of how the whey is pushed out through the slots in the basket.  There is another cheese mold that we use and we will show you that later.

Cheese with basket

Just for grins, I put the cheese on our kitchen scale to see how much we made.  Two pounds of cheese!  So, 2 gallons of milk makes 2 pounds of cheese.  You can see where the pusher pushed down, it made a 'lip' on the top.  I don't know if you're like this, but I am: We slice off the lip to make the cheese uniform.  I don't like non-uniform edges.  I'm especially OCD on that with a pan of brownies.  I like the pan to be even and it bugs me when it's not, so I eat a few slices until the pan of brownies is geometrically complete in a square or rectangle again.  Weird, yes, so I've been told (delicately) by my loving wife.

2 Pounds of Basis Cheese

Okay, we've separated the curds and whey, We've pressed it.  Tune in tomorrow to see the next step in cheese making.  I think you'll find the next step interesting.

Making Basic Cheese (Part 1 Culturing & Separating Curds from Whey)

Three cows in milk will give you a LOT of dairy products.  Besides milk there are other value added products like, butter, creme fraiche, whipped cream, kefir, buttermilk, and various types of cheeses.  Let's make some basic cheese!

The first thing we do when making basic cheese is adding a culture to the milk.  The culture we are adding is buttermilk that we've frozen in ice cube trays.  You use 1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk to 2 gallons of raw milk.  We thaw out the buttermilk.

Thawing out a couple cubes of frozen buttermilk

We sterilize the pot we will be making the cultured milk in by boiling about a half inch of water for 5 minutes and allowing it to steam.

A squeaky clean pot

Here are two gallons of fresh raw milk that we got from milking Daisy and Rosie. We've just gotten it out of the refrigerator.

Fresh, rich milk

Once the pot has been sterilized, we pour the milk in the pot and warm it until it reaches 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bringing the milk up to 68 degrees

Then we add 1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk to the warm milk.  We allow the milk to culture by letting it sit for 8 hours at room temperature.  After 8 hours warm the milk up to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

Adding buttermilk, allowing it to sit for 8 hours and then warming it up

Now we add 8 drops of animal rennet to half a cup of water.  Animal rennet comes from the stomach lining of young calves and will cause the milk to separate into curds and whey.

Adding 8 drops of animal rennet to water

Once the milk is warmed to 86 degrees, pour the rennet water mixture into the warm cultured milk.  Stir and allow to sit for an hour.

Adding rennet to the cultured milk

In an hour, you want to test for a "clean break" by inserting your finger at the edge of the pot.  It should be firm and not leave gooey stuff on your finger.  If it does allow it to sit a little longer.

Checking for a clean break

Once you have a clean break, you want to cut the curds with a knife into half inch cubes by cutting in one direction and then spinning the pot and cutting in the other.

Cutting the curds

Then stir the curds with your hands and start slowly heating it to 102 degrees while stirring.   

Look at those nice curds!

Now cut the larger cubes into smaller ones while continuing to stir.          

Cutting them into smaller pieces

Stir for about 15 minutes after you heat it to the desired temperature.  You'll notice the curds start to shrink so that they look like scrambled eggs.

The 'scrambled eggs' look

Now turn off the heat and let the curds sink to the bottom for a few minutes and then pour off the whey into another container.

Pouring off the whey

Once you get toward the end, you might want to use a colander to keep your curds from pouring into the whey.  What to do with all this whey?  Well, you could make ricotta cheese with it.  Perhaps we'll show that later.  Another thing we do is feed it to our hens.  They love it and it is full of protein and probiotics (beneficial bacteria).  You can also use whey as a preservative when lacto-fermenting vegetables.  We do this when we make our sauerkraut and gingered carrots.

Where there's a will, there's a WHEY!

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2 of making basic cheese as we illustrate how a bunch of gooey curds transform into cheese.

Movember 2013

This post has absolutely nothing to do with Biblical Agrarianism or agriculture.  In fact it is downright silly, but I wanted to preserve the photos since this only occurs once a year.  Each year in the month of November, we have a promotion of sorts to bring attention to 'men's issues.'  We're asked to not shave for the month of November and on the final day of the month, submit our entries for the winning mustache.  I guess if you wanted to get technical about it, it is about growing something - just a different type of crop.

I absolutely hate to shave so I look forward to November.  Here is how I looked on November 30th.  Tricia really didn't mind how it looked, but she did tell me that kissing me felt like "kissing a cactus!"  I had to attend our corporate office in Houston for a training class and a co-worker told me after seeing me at first that he thought that a homeless guy had wandered into the building.  At that comment and seeing a possible revenue enhancing opportunity, I asked if he could spare a couple of bucks, but he wasn't feeling very philanthropic apparently.

Will work for food

So I decided to have a little fun on the last day of the month, and first shaved off everything except the mustache and goatee.  The white in the beard is probably powdered sugar.  It certainly can't be gray hair!

Then I did an attempt at a Fu Manchu or biker mustache: (scary)

Finally, I shaved off all but the mustache.

Then a pencil-thin mustache:

What's that dirt on your upper lip, Kyle?

I look like a villain, don't I?  Tricia said I should leave it and attend church like this, but I decided to go clean shaven for the first time in a month as I didn't want to be villainous at church.

The villain

Clean shaven once again!  

Since today's post was pretty CHEESY, tomorrow maybe I'll post on our latest project, MAKING CHEESE!

Chickens in the Barn

Most of the chickens know their place on the farm.  Most of the chickens roost in the hen house or in one of the two chicken tractors.  But some of our chickens just think they're too special to roost with the others and insist upon sleeping in the barn.  It wouldn't be that bad of a thing except for the fact that the roosters that sleep in the barn crow LOUDLY in the morning when we're milking.  They begin crowing in the barn and the shrill sound echoes.

Barred Rock Rooster

When the Barred Rock Rooster goes to sleep, he twists his head around and buries it in his feathers.

Putting his head under the pillow

You'd think he'd be easy to move and I could simply pick him up and put him where he belongs, but the old boy has some weapons on his legs.  He's packing heat in the form of two inch spurs.  If he wasn't playing nice, he could do a number on you with those things.

Spurs!

But it's not only the rooster that sleeps in the barn.  He has a harem of Aracauna hens that roost in the barn with him.  Aracaunas are cool birds in that they lay blue and green eggs.  They are a smaller chicken than the other laying hens we have and are a little more wild, too.

Aracaunas on the stall rail

A couple of them will fly up into the rafters to bed down for the night.

Just like a barn owl

Here's another one...

Whoo Me?

They've got personality and I wouldn't mind them much in the barn if it wasn't for an annoying habit they have.  Each morning when we pour a scoop of feed for the cows as we're milking, these hens come running. They jump up on the feed trough and start eating, too.

The Breakfast buffet

They will jump in the feed trough and compete with an animal that weighs easily 800 pounds or so more than them for food.  Sometimes Daisy and Rosie will use their enormous heads to sweep the hens forcefully out of the trough.  This causes a lot of squawking and drama.

Having to compete to eat!

They've turned a peaceful process (milking) into a loud, stressful one.  My next project is to 'chicken proof' the barn.  We'll see if I meet with success in this endeavor.

Muddy around the barn

Almost 3 inches of rain coupled with overcast, cold weather has created a very muddy barnyard.  The cows come slogging through the muck to be milked in the morning and get mud all over the milking parlor.  To top it off, I discovered that my boots have a leak in them.

We all go marching through the mud and the muck

It just won't dry and we have to walk through it numerous times a day.  In the Spring I'll have to get a load of dirt delivered and try to spread it out to raise the level of the ground around the barn.

The chickens don't seem to let it bother them.

One of the reasons the mud hole is created right in from of the barn door is that we don't have gutters on the barn to re-direct the rainwater coming off of the roof of the barn.  The water then collects in a large mud hole that all the animals must trudge through.  Lots of the mud stays on the animal's hooves and is tracked off and re-deposited elsewhere.  This contributes to the mud hole getting larger and larger.

So I got the idea to put up gutters on the south side of the barn to help redirect some of that water.  I enlisted the help of my wife and in no time at all, we had 1/3 of it done.

Putting up gutters on the south side of the barn

The photo below shows how each end is capped off.  My plan is to run piping off of this and direct all the rainwater into water troughs for the cows, goats, and chickens.  

The end of the gutter

In no time at all our work was done and everything is installed.  I think these gutters are going to be a positive on several facets, namely, keeping water from pooling right in front of the barn door and two, collecting rainwater of of the barn roof will save us money.

We're done!

The photo above gives a good 'downstream' view of the new gutters on the south side of the barn.  The reason they are so muddy is that I used them as feeders when we raise our meat birds.  They work great as feed troughs for chickens if you are raising a bunch of birds.  I guess I'll have to purchase some more when our batch of meat birds arrive.

Jack Frost Nipping at your Nose

The morning following Thanksgiving was ushered in with roosters crowing and cows mooing.  Nothing out of the ordinary there - except for the fact that it was cold.  It got down to the lower 20's last night.  You can see that the pasture has a nice coating of frost that shimmers and sparkles in the morning sun.

Maggie Mae is cold and hungry for breakfast

Chickens are scratching

After looking at the effects of the frost on the pasture, I wanted to check out the garden.  The basil did not do so well with the frost.  The leaves are burnt.  I'm glad that we made lots of pesto that we froze and dried lots of basil and froze basil leaves as well.  I wanted to make some basil infused olive oil, but it looks like I missed that opportunity.

The frost did a number on our basil

Fortunately, the cole crops (brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy, and kale laugh at the frost.  It doesn't seem to bother them at all.

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They aren't close to being ripe yet, but they've shaded out the rows, which is nice as I don't have to weed any more.

The cole crops unfazed by the frost

One of the items in the garden I was quite concerned about was the lettuce.  We made a real nice salad mixture for Thanksgiving using the various varieties of lettuce we have growing right now.  I really like the way this one looks.  It is one of several varieties in a Rocky Mountain salad mix.  It is green with maroon freckles and tastes as good as it looks.

Beautiful lettuce

The second variety in the Rocky mountain mix is shown below.  It looks like your normal leaf lettuce except it looks like it is blushing with light maroon to pink shades on the outer tips of the leaves.

We have numerous rows of Black Seeded Simpson lettuce.  This is a tasty lettuce that is superb for salads, garnishing or simply snacking on right out of the garden.

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

And finally I have a row of Oak Leaf Lettuce.

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Why is it called Oak Leaf Lettuce, you ask?  Well, look at the leaf below.  It looks very similar to a leaf off of an oak tree.

Oak Leaf Lettuce

I enjoy eating a nice salad and after we clean up some Thanksgiving Day leftovers for a few days, we'll have salad on our menu.  Thankfully the frost didn't damage it.