What brands of store-bought milk work for making cheese?

Thanks for this thread!

I'm seriously considering making some cheese soon.

I made Mozzarella with Publix store brand whole milk, with the addition of calcium chloride.

Have made 8-10 cheeses with Trader Joes organic, replace a pint of milk with a pint of heavy cream, add 1/4tsp calcium chloride, works perfectly. Cheeses made include mozzarella, colby(was amazing), gouda, jack(x3 batches) and cheddar. Picture below (taken with an ultra amazing blackberry camera) is from the jug in my refrigerator, think it is destined for a mozzarella. We usually vary 1% or 2% depending on the cheese.

Plain old Kroger's brand works fine. You have to use 1% and add fat back in with heavy cream. 1/16 by weight of cream to total batch length should get you back to 3-4% milk fat (regular milk). I do add a heavy pinch of driveway salt (calcium chloride) to the batch, but I get nice clean breaks everytime!!

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Oh: you do have to stir in the cream, btw: it first has the tendency to sink to the bottom, then float to the top.....
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I like the idea of using 1-2% and adding back the milk fat with cream. I noticed with raw milk, since it's not homogenized, the texture of the finished cheese is much smoother than the homogenized batch I made which seems a bit grainy.

Ugh... I tried to make Mozz using Horizon in the gallon jug (which has worked for me before) and it was a disaster. The label said pasteurized but it was obviously UP. Guess it's off the list.

I get regular whole milk from Aldi's for $1.99/gal.

After making a mozz I have not been able to make a ricotta.

Do you think I'm getting too much out of the milk when making mozz?

Does anyone know what other ingredients I need to make cheddar?

homebrewer_99 said:

I get regular whole milk from Aldi's for $1.99/gal.

After making a mozz I have not been able to make a ricotta.

Do you think I'm getting too much out of the milk when making mozz?

Does anyone know what other ingredients I need to make cheddar?

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I haven't had any luck at all making ricotta from whey except when using raw milk.

For cheese like cheddar I would recommend adding a pint of cream to your milk to increase the butterfat content. It will work just fine if it works for mozz...

I know it's an old thread, but this might be relevant to some folks looking.

I made my first mozz the other day and had some issues. I bought Mountain Dairy, the cheaper of the two house brands at Kroger (a.k.a. Food 4 Less in SoCal), thinking that if Kroger brand made the list, and both are listed as just "Pasteurized," that it might work and I'd save 40 cents per gallon. Also on my mind was the store's advertising about "new practices" that keep their milk fresher, so I was skeptical all around that maybe they had switched to Ultra and not labelled it.

My first mozz with Mountain Dairy appeared to fail, and I was afraid I had confirmed my suspicions. It wouldn't form a smooth ball at the end, despite hitting the internal temp of 135 - it stayed grainy no matter how hard I worked it. So I chilled it, went out and bought a Kroger brand gallon, and tried again.

This part is where I screwed up - I also changed the process a bit. At the same point where I said that the Mountain Dairy brand failed, the Kroger brand came together a little better, so I kept heating it up higher. I had to heat it up higher than 135 (I didn't temp it though), but it ultimately formed a smooth ball and made a great pizza, and later a great lasagna, too.

A few days later, I took the Mountain Dairy brand mush, and after cooling it had formed a smooth surface in its container! So now I'm not sure if it would have worked better had I only kept working it.

But I do know one thing: Even though Kroger advertises their "Stays fresher longer" in the stores, their house brand milk still makes a good cheese.

This is a non-homogenized lightly pasteurized milk. You can find it in health food type stores.

Hey! The same question for 2021. What brands of store-bought milk work for making cheese? Or does anybody use some of these www.bestadvisor.com/cheese-making-kits kits?

Never buy kits, as I simply culture my milk with home made kefir made from kefir grains (and I mean milk kefir, not water kefir) . Kefir is rich in many yeasts and bacteria that work at lower and higher temperatures so you can make a very large range of different cheeses using cultures in about a half cup of kefir per gallon of milk.
Any store bought milk that has not been ultra-pasteurized is OK if you add Calcium Chloride (1/4 t per gallon).

I can't help the US folks but in Australia buy your local co-op milk and if they sell it, a Jersey cow variety, which has a higher fat content than milk from Fresians. Avoid all supermarket brands which tend to have both low protein and low fat content.