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Getting started making cheese?
Andy Hanna • July 1, 2019
Cheese making basics!
Making Cheese
I've always loved cheese as long as I can remember. My parents would always had cheddar in the fridge. Whenever we went to the delicatessen we always knew we would be picking up some olives and feta. I started making cheese at home in my kitchen - there is no point going commercial if you don't have the drive to start experimenting at home. I made cheese regularly in my home for five years - reading, practicing and refining the product. I did have the luxury of living on our family dairy (so milk was on tap!).
Cheese making is a mix of learning and experimenting. The best way is to start practicing with your milk in small batches on your kitchen. Soft cheeses are much easier than hard cheeses. The reason being that soft cheeses can be eaten in a matter of days after making (so you get to see what is going right and wrong in the process - in a timely way). Hard and semi-hard cheeses take at least three months before you know what you've created and by then if it isn't good you have forgotten what in the process you did and how to correct it!
My other big tip if you are starting out is to go to a brewery and purchase the cheese ingredients rather than the kits. At least this was the case when I was starting out.
When I started out, I had so much equipment and I would spend so much time sanitizing all these things I didn't need - and it took me a while that there were some really simple things you can use to start making cheese these are:
- Ladle (with a sieve like piece at the end)
- Long knife for cutting the curd
- A teaspoon
- Animal or Vegetarian Liquid Rennet (you can buy this from you local brewery)
- Mesophilic Culture (for Feta)
- Camembert Culture Mix (for Brie and Camembert)
- A ricotta sieve (I like the rectangle ones - but the round ones are fine)
- A Camembert hoop
That's it! My biggest tip KEEP IT SIMPLE.
What is the easiest cheese to make?
The easiest cheeses to make are soft cheese. From easiest to hardest:
1. Ricotta
2. Quark
3. Feta
4. Haloumi
5. Camembert
6. Mozzarella
How long does it take to make different cheeses?
Don't be put off by the length of time it takes to make each cheese, because you don't need to be working on the cheese for the whole time, you often just have to be around during the cheese process:
1. Ricotta - 1 hrs
2. Quark - 30 hrs
3. Feta - 24 hrs
4. Haloumi - 5 hrs
5. Camembert - 24 hrs + one week of turning + three more weeks of maturing before eating!
6. Mozzarella - 5 hrs
It was common for people to have a few sugars in their tea growing up (even me!) – the whole concept of artificial sweeteners or no sugar in your tea was for those people more on the extremities. Now days it is fairly mainstream to not have sugar in your tea or just a little. In terms of a creamy alternative with our deserts – most of us would still enjoy a little bit of ice-cream or Greek yogurt. BUT the same sweet aftertaste for those options lingers... so introducing Quark. I first came across Quark from Comboyne Culture www.comboyneculture.com.au. A really great cheese maker there was making it. Located next to a German butcher, he had his customers for the product as Quark is traditionally used in German pastries and cheesecakes as well as a savoury spread. Yoghurt vs Quark Quark and yogurt both come with a high amount of probiotic benefits for good gut health. However, Quark generally has more probiotics due to the manufacturing process which doesn’t require the cheese maker to take the milk to boiling point (which kills both good and bad bacteria naturally found in the milk). With the quark process, a batch pasteurizer is used to take the milk to around 66 degrees and then cools the milk retaining some of the natural bacteria. For those worried at this point – a culture is added to the milk and an overnight curing process occurs. People love Greek yogurt for the thickness and body it brings to the meal – Quark is just as thick, however is even more creamy than yogurt. Also – many people don’t like the tartness of the plain Greek yogurt so purchase a sweetened alternative. Quark doesn’t have the ‘Greek yoghurt’ acidity of flavour, offering a more balanced, higher protein alternative. Ice Cream vs Quark Who doesn’t like ice cream! Until you try your stewed fruit with quark! Quark has almost the same body and density of ice cream. The creaminess of the quark is comparable if not superior to ice cream. I think the biggest win is the sugary aftertaste is gone (and so are the calories that come with it!). See if you can tell the difference in the photo with the Rhubarb which is ice cream and which is quark! The weakness of Quark The downfall of quark is that is a fresh and unpreserved alternative that won’t last in the fridge more than around 10 days (depending how close to manufacturing you purchased it). Yoghurt keeps for a little longer and icecream much longer still. However all things considered definitely a product I’ll be keeping in the fridge. I will write a blog a little later on in regards to the uses of quark!