Goat milk cheese

Thanks for your advice , I will try to order little cheese batch first to check the quality. I am unsure as this will be my first purchase through online retailer.

Hello All,
In Some days I am planning to give party to my Italian friends. There are lots of dishes that require quality cheese. I have try to buy cheese from supermarket but was unable to find all varieties, than I planned to buy it online through my local online grocery store in Essex
My question is I got the same freshness, texture and flavour if I buy it online. Please let me know, It is very important for me.

Jeanne

Sorry for the delay in responding to you.

I note that you have obtained starter and rennet.

Coulommiers cheese is very easy to make and can be eaten in salads, on its own and in a variety of other ways. The cheese made from goats' milk has a pleasant mild acidic taste and can be eaten un-ripened.

Below is a summary of how to make Coulommiers cheese. It must be emphasised that a very high level of cleanliness, personal hygiene and attention to detail is required to make good quality cheese. For safety reasons it is essential to be able to measure acidity and if you cannot do this competently you should not attempt to make cheese for consumption. Cheese mats, syringes, detergents, sanitizers, cheese moulds, thermometers and equipment for pasteurisation are also required.

It is also important that your goats have been milked hygienically, that they are healthy and that they have not recently been treated with antibiotics, worming agents or other medicines.

For all these reasons, many people prefer to take a course on cheese manufacture before attempting to make cheese at home and I recommend that you consider doing so! Cheese courses are relatively inexpensive and are good fun as well. Loughry-now CAFRE has been providing courses in all aspects of cheese manufacture for many years.

DISCLAIMER!!! Obviously I cannot be responsible if after following these instructions you or your family become ill!

It is strongly recommended that you pasteurise the milk before starter addition (60°C for 30 minutes), and cool to 30°C prior to starter addition. While very good cheese can be made from raw milk, there are some risks, and because of these, raw-milk cheeses are best made by experienced cheesemakers.

There are several commercial pasteurisers that can be used for small scale cheesemaking and I will say more about these in the cheese manufacture part of the website.

When the milk has cooled to 30°C it should be inoculated with the cheese starter from the dairy. A sterile syringe is useful for this purpose. Add 1.0 millilitre of starter per 1 litre of milk-this is a 0.1% inoculum. After adding the starter you will need to add some rennet, this is what the dairy called coagulant.

Add 0.3 millilitres of rennet per each litre of cheese-milk to a sterile container. For 6 litres of milk you would have 1.8 millilitres of rennet in your container. Since this quantity of rennet is very small relative to the volume of milk used, it is good practice to dilute this with about 10 times its volume of fresh mains water.

When this has been done add the diluted rennet to the milk and mix for about 2 minutes-do not exceed this time.

The milk will have visibly coagulated after about 30 minutes and should be sufficiently firm for use in the next stage of cheese manufacture after 11/2 -2 hours. At this time the curd is spooned or ladled into small cylindrical moulds-open cylinders. These are placed on the top of cheese mats. Yes you will have to buy these. Again there are several commercial suppliers.

When the moulds are filled they can be left overnight- at least 18 hours- at ‘room temperature’-this will not work if yoghurt culture is used! - and emptied in the morning.

Before proceeding to the next stage it is necessary to check that the starter has grown properly and produced the correct concentration of acid and other natural preservatives. There are several ways that the acidity can be measured. Perhaps the simplest way is to use a pH meter or pH paper. The pH at this stage should be 5.0 or lower, by lower I mean 4.9, 4.8, and so on. If the pH is higher than 5.2, say 5.3 do not proceed further. Stop!

The cheese after removal from the moulds must be brined. Brining is the immersion of the cheese in a solution of ‘household salt’, sodium chloride. A brine containing 15 grammes of salt per each 100 millilitres of water should be sufficient.

After immersion for about half an hour, the cheese is removed, excess brine removed, packed in cling film and stored at 5 C or less. It should be eaten within 3-4 days.

And enjoy!

Jeanne thank you for accessing the forum. As I explained in my E-mail I prefer to deal with requests like this in the forum rather than by E-mail.

Firstly, yes it is possible to make cheese at home from goats' milk. If you wish to manufacture cheese for sale in the UK then you will have to meet various regulatory requirements and obtain a licence.

In due course I will include sections on cheese manufacture and some references to other sites that deal with cheesemaking at home.

I will try and respond in more detail over the next day or so.

In the meantime if you live close to a cheesemaking plant, or a college or university that teaches food technology see if you can obtain a source of starter and rennet.