Making your own cheese

mattyfez

mattyfez

mattyfez

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12 Apr 2007
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Been looking at cheese kits online – this one looks pretty comprehensive compared to say this or this or this

Shuold I just start with a cheaper soft chese kit? Ideally I’d like to have more options, but not sure if i should jump straight in with a £90 kit..

Anyone had any experience?

Thanks
 
My wife has done a bit of cheese making it has been a bit hit or miss just from books. Her skills took a big step up after a bit of training. You might want to go on a taught course first just to help you see the fundamentals. The kits that focus on hard cheese will be more expensive and it is a more involved process. Go ahead and buy one of the cheaper kits for a fresh soft cheese but consider a course before hard cheese would be my advice.
 
Thanks.. After a bit of reading it does seem like soft cheese is easier and a lot quicker to get a result.. The hard cheeses seem to be a bit more difficult in terms of time maturing in a more temperature /humidity controlled environment.

Think I'll go with a soft cheese kit and take it from there.. Thanks
 
Hard cheese isn’t too difficult really and you don’t need to spend much at all, certainly not £90 on equipment.

I haven’t done it for a few years, but other than the starter culture and some rennet I bought a roll of cheesecloth and half a dozen large fist sized slightly dome shaped Tupperware type tubs and drilled holes in them, and used books, dumbbell weights etc for pressing. I reckon I spent about £15 quid on stuff. I went expensive on milk which was worth it, I already had a very large stock pot from making industrial amounts of jam and marmalade

That initial kit sorted me for a year of making cheese before I paid for more gear. I’ve also used cake tins very effectively for making larger cheeses too. That kit was good enough that I won a couple of awards in a national amateur cheese making competition
 
heeeed said:
Hard cheese isn’t too difficult really and you don’t need to spend much at all, certainly not £90 on equipment.

I haven’t done it for a few years, but other than the starter culture and some rennet I bought a roll of cheesecloth and half a dozen large fist sized slightly dome shaped Tupperware type tubs and drilled holes in them, and used books, dumbbell weights etc for pressing. I reckon I spent about £15 quid on stuff. I went expensive on milk which was worth it, I already had a very large stock pot from making industrial amounts of jam and marmalade

That initial kit sorted me for a year of making cheese before I paid for more gear. I’ve also used cake tins very effectively for making larger cheeses too. That kit was good enough that I won a couple of awards in a national amateur cheese making competition
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We all need a write up with pics of this. I love this kind of stuff!
 
I used to make cheese quite often (Brie, Stilton, Cheddar, Manchego, Parmesan etc). Used to enjoy making it as it’s quite therapeutic, problem is that it is quite time consuming. Soft cheese is certainly a lot quicker to make and eat as you don’t have to wait so long for the cheese to mature.

I used to use a wine fridge to mature my cheeses as it also has a water draw to control humidity. There used to be cheese making thread here, might be worth searching for it, found ones that I did
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/making-cheese-halloumi.18465753/page-5#post-23413672
 
Thanks all, some really interesting stuff..

I've read that the specific type of milk is key, as in you have to get un homogenised milk.. Although I did read you can use skimmed milk with double cream at a certain ratio to accomplish the same thing.

For example, I've seen comments like this a few times..


Milk proteins are very variable, and this season appears to be more than usually fragile in some cases. I suggest you try buying skimmed milk and double cream, instead of whole milk. Combine them at the ratio of 12 parts skim to 1 part double cream. I'm using this myself at the moment, and with a supermarket supply; its going OK.
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So I'm guessing that I can just buy supermarket skimmed milk and just add double cream to make up the difference?
Rather then hunting around to buy a specific type of milk?
 
Bear said:
I used to make cheese quite often (Brie, Stilton, Cheddar, Manchego, Parmesan etc). Used to enjoy making it as it’s quite therapeutic, problem is that it is quite time consuming. Soft cheese is certainly a lot quicker to make and eat as you don’t have to wait so long for the cheese to mature.

I used to use a wine fridge to mature my cheeses as it also has a water draw to control humidity. There used to be cheese making thread here, might be worth searching for it, found ones that I did
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/making-cheese-halloumi.18465753/page-5#post-23413672
Click to expand...


That's a really interesting thread, thanks Bear.. I'll read it in more detail when I get time
 
The thing is decent quality french cheeses are so affordable these days especially if you have a speciality shop or Waitrose nearby I cba making my own. Even simple stuff like mozzarella and ricotta is barely worth doing. I only bother making my own goat's ricotta these days.
 
I'm just doing it for fun to be honest, it's something that interests me...

I love roule! But I'm also a fan of wendlesydale and Cheddar and the occasional blue.. And I really like brie..

If I could pull off a good brie, that's basically my goal. Mozzerealla and ricotta are a bit boring.

But I really like soft cheeses like roule and feta..
 
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The thing is you can get an infinitely better Cornish or French brie for literally pennies.

I would love to be able to make a decent Epoisses, Chaource, Saint-Félicien, Livarot, Saint Vernier, Mont d’Or, etc.

What might be useful would be making a decent standard Gruyere, Raclette or Vacherin for much cheaper than the supermarkets.
 
I'm going to make some cheese.

I'd like to go through the processing and see what happens lol! I want to learn what's involved, and possibly make bad cheese.

Of course I could buy any cheese from a shop! But I want to make cheese!
 
heeeed said:
Definitely it’s something to do for fun rather than to supply lots of cheese. Like lots of food making. I can buy a nice sausage from my butcher, I can buy good beer. It’s fun to do.
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Agreed 100%! It's done for fun, and the love of the craft, and not because it's cheaper.

heeeed said:
It’s not hard to get the unhomogenised milk tbh. It is a bit more expensive though
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I think this is true for Europe/UK, but I think it's considerably harder in the US. That said, I've never looked for unhomoginised milk here.
 
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