The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Food processing => Topic started by: smudger on August 09, 2013, 11:14:16 am
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After a few weeks, the joy of cheesemaking every second day has waned.....I need my life back!
However confused.
Some sites say use max 2 day old milk ie yesterdays and todays. But have seen some say up to 3 days old is ok (which would mean 2x weekly cheesemaking sessions). On my c/m course they recommended freezing milk fresh the defrost in fridge. However, I have also seen some say don't use frozen milk for cheesemaking!
The joy of the internet....
Of course this entails trying to balance time / freshness and storage space in the freezer and fridge.
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If you're talking goats' milk it may well freeze okay; cows' milk tends to separate and the cream go into fat globules, which isn't always ideal for subsequent cheesemaking. Or with cows' milk you could try separating before freezing and store the skimmed and cream separately, then recombine.
The only real limit on the age of the milk is how contaminated it has become, surely? For soft cheese you wouldn't want it too old, but for a hard or semi-hard cheese, so long as you don't have any contamination from bacteria that might affect flavour, the maturation process would kill any other contaminating bacteria. You could always (re)pasteurise before making the cheese if you had any concerns?
Personally, I know our own Jersey milk arrives in the kitchen clean and so long as it's filtered and stored in the fridge quickly and cleanly, lidded, then it's absolutely fine for at least 3 days.
I'd try a batch and see if the flavour is what you want.