The Right Whey and The Wrong Whey

Cheese makers of the world, I tip my hat to you.

It's not often that I get so frustrated with a project that I step away from it and take a breather but my attempts at making mozzarella have been less than fruitful. 4 batches of grainy ricotta like curd later and I learned the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized and what it means to cheese making. On the 5th batch is when I learned how important it is to use the proper amount of citric acid and to have a controlled source.

Perhaps I should explain a little.

Cheese making is, in theory, pretty simple. A combination of acid, rennet, heat and time are utilized to make the proteins in milk form curd. Curd is coagulated milk protein (casein) that has been separated from the whey protein. Gross as that may sound, curd is fresh tasting, smooth and plenty edible. Great with fruit, preserves and sourdough. Ricotta cheese is less of a cheese and more of a loose curd made with just acid. To turn curd into mozzarella all you have to do is cook it slowly and knead it until it becomes stretch and pliable. Mozzarella, The delicious cheese many of use love and pay large amounts of money for. To turn curd into other kinds of cheese is going to take a whole series of posts to explain.

When done properly, the whole process should take about an hour to an hour and a half and result in a great final product. "Should" is the operative word there. If you want to take up cheese making you need to follow the directions very carefully. Use the amount of acid suggested, make sure to get low heat pasteurized milk (raw if you can manage it) and do your research. Why do I keep mentioning pasteurization? Remember those proteins I was talking about earlier? Well, high heat pasteurization denatures whey proteins and makes it almost impossible for the curd to set properly. If you use ultra-pasteurized milk you will end up with a decent ricotta that you wasted rennet in but if you try and cook the curd it will turn into an awful, grainy and rubbery mess.

For the most part I used to think "milk is milk". As true as that may be for cereal it's far less true for cheese.

If you are interested in cheese I suggest following this link to a great starter recipe for mozzarella. New England Cheese Making supply Company is a great site full of recipes and information including a guide to finding "good milk" or milk that will work for cheese making.

Look for updates with embedded  fanfare when I finally pull this one off.

American Wheat Beer Update and Saison Yeast Apfel Wine

It's been a while since I have updated because my computer decided to shuffle off its mortal coil in the form of a defective GPU. I am in the process of getting my computer replaced and in the mean time I am borrowing a laptop from the girlfriend. I am trying not to take it away from her too often as she has uses for it that are actually important. But really, what's more important than beer and food?

As you know, I brewed an American wheat beer just about two weeks ago. It has been slowly fermenting in my pantry closet, which stays in the low 50s this time of year, and it was ready to bottle on the 1st of the month. This was a fairly simple process that I will go over in more detail at a later date. Hopefully with some decent quality pictures. The beer was a very light golden color with a nice flavor of wheat and malt in the small sample that I tasted. I am not commenting on the flavor too much because carbonation can really highlight certain notes and can change how you experience the brew. I am going with natural re-fermentation in the bottle for carbonation as I always do when I bottle and I have to wait at least another week before I get to try this one in it's final form.

The second part of this post is in regards to an apfel wine I brewed before I even started this blog. A little background on this one. I have been in love with saison style beers for a long time. Sometimes known as "farmhouse ales" these are beers that are common to the areas in Belgium and France that border each other. I got interested in these when I started exploring my culinary heritage. France makes some wonderful beers but it is not one of the more well known or well respected beer producing countries. Saisons are distinctly French and Belgian so it made sense to try my hand at brewing one. It was great. I loved the character that the saison strain of yeast gave the brew so I cultured it and have been using it since. Most recently I used it in a mead and an apfel wine.

I am sipping on the last bottle of the apfel wine right now and I am really enjoying it. Very light golden color. Similar to a very light apple juice. The nose is fruity and smells distinctly of apple and spice. There is a little bit of a yeasty smell but it's light and subtle. The carbonation adds an effervescence and gives this drink a very light body. While it may be very bubbly there is no head to speak of. A layer of white foam formed when first poured but it vanished before the last drops had even left the bottle. This is all pretty standard for a cider or and apfel wine. It's just fermented fruit juice.

The flavor is dry and mildly tannic but it does not dry the mouth out. Sour but balanced with a distinct spice note that is likely from the yeast. Saison yeasts are known and prized for lending this kind of spice flavor to the brews fermented with them. It's part of why I am such a fan.