My wife decided to try her hand at making cheese. We've never made cheese before, so she got a kit and started reading over the directions and was concerned about how she was supposed to keep the milk at the correct temperatures throughout the process. I thought that the problem seemed quite similar to that of maintaining mash temperatures, so I wondered if my RIMS systems might be the solution. Using some older pots (5gal and 10 gal from my old brew rig), I was able to cobble together a RIMS controlled double-boiler setup as seen below (technically I guess this setup is a sous vide).
We made the kit last night and as far as I can tell, it worked like a champ. Held temps right where we wanted them for the gouda. Out of this I have two questions...
1) Is anyone doing anything similar? A quick search here didn't turn up much.
2) I still used infusions of 175F water to raise the temps per the instructions, but I was wondering if there was anything special about the 175F water or if infusions of non-boiling water is just a convenient way for most folks to raise the temperature quickly and accurately? I assume boiling water is not used so as to not cook the milk protiens and I could just as easily have used the RIMS module to heat the milk for the next step?
We made the kit last night and as far as I can tell, it worked like a champ. Held temps right where we wanted them for the gouda. Out of this I have two questions...
1) Is anyone doing anything similar? A quick search here didn't turn up much.
2) I still used infusions of 175F water to raise the temps per the instructions, but I was wondering if there was anything special about the 175F water or if infusions of non-boiling water is just a convenient way for most folks to raise the temperature quickly and accurately? I assume boiling water is not used so as to not cook the milk protiens and I could just as easily have used the RIMS module to heat the milk for the next step?
