Back Slopping............. why waste it?

[Owly055]

Anybody do it? I just started a batch, and decided to back slop whey from the previous batch that I'd been souring before making ricotta. Commercial cultures are not cheap! I'm making another round of feta, and the cultures involved are not normally found in feta, but who cares? Among other things are Flora Danica, and some Propionic Shermani, neither of which are going to "harm" the feta.

Why waste it?

H.W.

 

[Owly055]

Rennet as a catalyst??

I got "back sloppy" yesterday, and as I was busy with other things. I poured a quart of whey from a previous batch (day before) into a gallon of cold milk, mixed it up well, and set it on a hot pad. I like a lot of sour tang anyway, so I reasoned that a bit of extra ripening time woudn't hurt anything. As it turned out, the milk sat for about 4 hours before I got back to it. By that time the temp was a bit over 90F, and the curd had formed and pulled away from the edges of the pan, and was floating in whey. It was a fairly soft curd...... about like my Chevre. The Flora Danica gave it a very distinctive flavor..... a very nice flavor, and I'm thinking of adding it to my kefir culture. I have the cheese hanging and draining. I added NO RENNET. The residual rennet in the whey did all my curd setting.

Note that the whey comprised 20% of the total liquid. Note also that a Chevre calls for about 25% of the amount of rennet one would normally use, and the curd approximated this result. This tells me that rennet is NOT consumed in cheese making, but remains in the whey.

As I have to go to town this afternoon, and I have close to 2 gallons of fairly fresh whey, I'm going to take this adventure one step further, and buy another gallon of milk, and combine it with ALL the whey I have, and put it on the heat pad. If things go the way I think they will, I'll end up with curd floating in a LOT of whey. The heat pad will probably take the liquid a bit over 100F in time..... The result should be interesting.

H.W.

 

[bernardsmith]

what kind of heat pad do you use?

 

[passedpawn]

Seems like a pretty good idea to me. Hmmm...

 

[Owly055]

what kind of heat pad do you use?

The heat pad I use is a heavy rubber pad designed for melting snow off boots.... it gets quite hot. I've had it for quite a few years, and don't know if you can get them anymore......

H.W.

 

[Owly055]

Seems like a pretty good idea to me. Hmmm...

Not such a good idea.... at least not the way I did it with the long slow culturing period. Once the curd has set, it's set, and you can't add more rennet to get a firmer curd. The next time I do this, I'll add quite a bit of whey to the warm milk, mixing it up well, then give some culturing time, and try to get the rennet in before the residual rennet begins setting up the curd...... unless I'm trying to get a chevre type cheese, or a soft set cheese between sour cream and cream cheese in consistency.

The idea sounds good... like many, and back slopping is a pretty standard technique, but my methodology needs a bit of honing ;-) I'm thinking that letting the whey continue to sour for a day or so, then storing it in the fridge for use on the next batch, then removing it and allowing it to come up to room temp and allowing it to become active for another day before using it................

H.W.