# Chalky Cheese?



## Island Creek Farm

I've made Pepper Jack, Colby and Cheddar...all aged per instructions...however, they are all chalky. Is this because my goats have lower butterfat? When the cheeses were made, they were about 5 months fresh. All are Alpines.

My mozzeralla is perfect, so is my Chevre....should I just stick to soft cheeses? If so, might I try a Camembert or Brie? Pav? What would you recommend?

thanks!


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## linuxboy

Chalky is due to high acid. All of those cheeses are basically variants of American style commercial cheese, made in similar ways. With that cheese style, the drain pH is absolutely crucial because you need for the curds to knit before the acidity drops. So is the pH at salting. You need to arrest the development of acidity at the right stage, so that some of the calcium bonds degrade, but not too many. If too many break, what you get then is the protein as it breaks down will not break down properly, and you'll get this acidic tang that's overly acidic.

Alpine summer milk does have a slight tendency to have less fat, but there's more milk with less protein as well (meaning the fat to protein ratio is different than, say, Nubian milk, but it's still acceptable). So in the end, it does make a slight difference, but acidity is the larger issue.

Hard cheeses are tough to do. If you look at the types of cheeses made, the French Alpine goats, their milk is used for chevre and all the many moldy variants. It's generally not used to make hard cheese. The type of goat milk used for hard cheese has much higher fat and higher protein. Murcia grenada, for example, and other Spanish goats make for amazing hard cheese.

So if you're using pure Alpine milk, especially summer milk, I would try to stick with fresher cheeses that are edible sooner.

Do you have any mold culture? Geo and candium or just candidum? I designed a hopefully foolproof cheese that's fairly easy to do http://www.wacheese.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82

You essentially make a chevre and let it mold over and eat it.


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## Island Creek Farm

I'll definately get some mold cultures...knew I could count on you to know what was going on! Soft cheeses it is!

thanks!


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