Goat Cheese recipe.
Ok let's try this. (I will include some tips for others wanting to make simple cheese at home).
Using a few extensions of the recipe will give you a number of different types.
This is a slow coagulation recipe for Goat's milk (will also work well with cow's milk). Best set in a 20 litre bucket, though I have been very successful using 250 litres in a covered vat by maintaining the room temp' at 21 centigrade.
You will need to be able to keep your milk at 20/21 centigrade overnight.
For small-scale an old (non-working) fridge makes a good incubator.. Ideally you should fit a 60-watt light bulb inside wired to a thermostat (and ordinary wall-type central heating one will do the trick and will be quite cheap to buy). Though, provided your milk has stabilised at the right temperature, you should find that you can maintain this simply with a very low wattage bulb on it's own (15 Watts candle bulb can do it).
I suspect that you will be using a DVI (direct vat inoculation) freeze-dried starter.
If so, you will need around 6 to7 ml of the powder per 100 litres (22 Gals) so divide that to suit the quantity of milk you use. Measure the starter quantity with a set of small kitchen spoons. (these will be in millilitres but it's about the only way to measure very small quantities fairly accurately).
If you have Penicillium then add a tiny amount to the milk. I mean just a pinhead or two.
Add 14 mls of standard liquid rennet per 100 Litres. Stir starter and rennet well in and leave for 14 hours without disturbing it at all. If you need to leave it for longer to suit your time then reduce the starter. The acidity when you remove the curd should be 0.45 to 0.5.
Too low will give you a stodgy curd and too high will make a very fragile cheese that will become too hard. (see recipe for Quark on my pages). There should be just one or two very small cracks in the curd surface when it is right.
The first cheese you can make with this is a small soft fresh Picadon-type.
Use small cup-shape perforated molds (about the size of a pot of yoghurt). Ladle thin slices into the molds and simply leave it to drain and set. Do not fill molds in one go but go round and ladle a little into each mold in turn until they are filled. Turn once in the molds when you think it is firm enough to do so. (Simply tip the cheese gently onto the fingers of one hand then turn onto the fingers of the other hand, place the mold over it and invert the whole thing). I usually make just a few of these from the top of the coagulation. Sprinkle each side lightly with salt when well set and easy to handle.
The rest of the curd you need to scoop gently into a coarse cloth to pre-drain.
I use a number of shallow baskets (plastic food trays such as you will find pastries and the like delivered in). You will need to have this over some sort of draining table or sink. (If it is a very small make you may simply tie the cloth to form a bag and hang it for a while to get the right consistency).
Line the basket with the cloth and scoop the curd into it. Leave it for about an hour then lift the edges of the cloth to fold the curd away from the sides and assist drainage. Do this at intervals until the curd will fold over on itself like soft dough. (Should be until the acidity of the draining whey is around 0.7). Do it too quickly and the acidity will be too low and the curd will look and feel like porridge.
Use your Camembert molds (or any open-ended pipe molds placed on a draining mat) and scoop the curd into these. It will be quite stiff and will only sink by about 1/4 of the mold depth. Turn molds by placing another mat on top and inverting after about 1 hour, and then four or five times over the next few hours.
Leave in the molds overnight then de-mold the cheese and either dry salt all over or slip them into a 20% brine for 20/30 minutes. Let the cheese dry on draining mats (turning occasionally) at low humidity (maybe in front of a fan) until the edges are just barely about to show a little yellow from the drying.
Ripen at 10/12 centigrade for around ten days at a dryish, 85% relative humidity (when the Penicillium should be fairly well covering the cheese) Try not to handle them during this period or you will disturb the mold growth and will get black Mucor mold patches. Turning should be done by placing a fresh mat on the top of the cheese and inverting onto this.
You can make these just about any shape and size you want.
If you want an ash finish you can usually get pharmaceutical charcoal powder from a chemist shop. This is best mixed with your salt and applied when salting.
If they grow blue instead of white penicillium, your cheese is too acid.
If they grow hairy, grey, molds they are under acid and retaining too much moisture as a result of this.

1 Kilo cheeses, made to this recipe, ready for brine... they are very fragile at this stage. Made in open-ended pipe molds... Some home-made pipe molds: a small cup-shaped mold: in front is a small kitchen strainer mold: draining mats, and a ripening mat on top: Plastic syringe for measuring rennet and whey for acidity testing. (I find these better than pipettes). Goat keepers will have them for worming purposes so you can usually get them from agricultural supplies.
An easy way to heat or cool small quantities of milk is to place one container (with lid) inside another and add hot or cold water to the outer one. {drill a drain hole about three quarters of the way up the outer one or your inner one will float}. Stir the milk frequently and keep your thermometer suspended in the milk to monitor the heating or cooling. You need to ensure that the temperature stabilises exactly.
Unless you have a supplier of the correct draining mats you may have difficulty in finding ones to which the curd will not stick. At a push you can use the wooden-reed tablemat type, but sterilise them in close to boiling water before and after each use.
These cheeses are nice for use fresh, without any ripening at all. Kept well chilled they will be fine for a couple of weeks as fresh cheese but, they are great after three weeks at about 10c to 12c.

Good luck. James
Note: When you ladle your curd into molds this has the same effect as cutting: The thicker the slices the more moisture the curd will retain and the more acid will the cheese become during the time that the curd remains in the mold and unsalted.
Ladling, does not simply mean filling your mold with broken curd. You should use a gentle spinning and cutting motion with the ladle and take clean, unbroken, slices from the top of the curd. What you actually slide into the mold should be a whole, complete, slice. This is not always possible to attain with every slice as the curd in your container will tend to become a little broken up the more you ladle.. when filling the molds one should try to use the broken pieces in the centre of the cheese and to distribute these evenly amongst cheeses.
This all improves with experience and is what makes the difference between a factory Camembert and the lovely soufflé effect one gets with a true hand-made one.
When scooping curd into cloths, or molds, the same principles apply and one should treat it very gently and try to retain even-sized pieces {the French say you should treat it like a virgin bride}.

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