Cheese and Cheese making

[abraxas]

A couple of the beer fests around here had cheese jerky booths this year.  It's like a thick mozzarella  with chunks of jerky in it, not too bad.

http://www.cheesejerky.com/main.html

Since they were selling them at the second festival I think I might have accidentally stole one from the first.

[boulderbrewer]

Ok some "bald" blue cheese. This was a couple days from removing the first bloom. The red mold is natural. Only a few more months! Yummmmmmmm!

[MrNate]

Ok, here's my dumb question for the night. I've always been told that eating moldy things will make you sick because the mold releases toxins into the medium. Now is that one of those old wive's tales, or is it a very special kind of mold that grows on bleu cheese?

If the latter, how does one know that his cheese is, in fact, growing the correct mold? I recognize that you innoculate it with a specific culture, but is it just hope beyond that point?

[boulderbrewer]

Blue cheese mold that I had afterscraping was not harmful, an I'm still here, didn't even give my the runs. Most cheese molds won't hurt you unless you eat alot of it.


One of the cheese molds that is the source of camabert cheese is penicillum I bet that would not hurt you. You may want to keep that in your fridge just in case!

Here is a link and you should decide for your self what is good for you and what is not.
http://www.dairyconnection.com/commerce/catalog.jsp?catId=4

[tubercle]

Ok, here's my dumb question for the night. I've always been told that eating moldy things will make you sick because the mold releases toxins into the medium. Now is that one of those old wive's tales, or is it a very special kind of mold that grows on bleu cheese?

If the latter, how does one know that his cheese is, in fact, growing the correct mold? I recognize that you innoculate it with a specific culture, but is it just hope beyond that point?

 Most of the mold - read bacteria - in cheese occurs naturally in milk and is beneficial to be ingested. Actually your body needs it to digest stuff properly. The environment of an aging cheese is a lot like pickles, beer and wine with low PH and such. The bad critters find this environment hostile and if any do grow there it will be very evident.

[MrNate]

Not to disagree with tubercle, but certain cheeses (like Bleu) most definitely do contain fungal mold in addition to bacteria.

I was just curious as to how you go about determining whether or not your cheese is actually growing the right culture, or how one creates an environment that is an eden to one kind of mold but not another, or if, in general, apathy is the best policy.

By the by, I've got nothing against lactobacillus. I have a bowl full of the little suckers on top of my fridge at this very moment, awaiting their imminent sacrifice to the bakery gods.

[euge]

The fairly high salt content in cheese helps preserve it and retard spoiling. It's a pretty harsh environment for most organisms. 

[tubercle]

Not to disagree with tubercle, but certain cheeses (like Bleu) most definitely do contain fungal mold in addition to bacteria.

I was just curious as to how you go about determining whether or not your cheese is actually growing the right culture, or how one creates an environment that is an eden to one kind of mold but not another, or if, in general, apathy is the best policy.

By the by, I've got nothing against lactobacillus. I have a bowl full of the little suckers on top of my fridge at this very moment, awaiting their imminent sacrifice to the bakery gods.

  Feel free to disagree with me anytime. I might actually learn something from it

 Yes, there are many type of mold and such associated with the cheese but think of the cheese environment like the beer environment. We hear "there is nothing that can grow in a healthy fermenting beer that will hurt you". For some beer styles this extra growth is actually desirable. This is mainly because of the lack of O2. The interior of cheese is the same way. No O2 available for the harmful types to survive, especially in the aging process where the "good" bacteria and molds overwhelm the food supply just like a healthy dose of yeast does for beer. Finally the finished product gets to the point where the environment is just too hostile for even the good stuff to grow and live but the enzymes produced through their death continue to mature the cheese.

 The exterior is a different story. Moisture and O2 is available. This is where salt content, drying to create a rind, waxing or vacuum sealing, etc..comes in. In the case of blues and other mold rind developed cheeses, again the predominate mold overwhelms through a controlled environment. Bad stuff can grow on the outside so attention is due. In order to get the blue mold to the interior (its actually already there, just not viable) the cheese has to be pierced to allow O2 inside to create the veining. Sometimes a bad, thus harmful, mold will get on the cheese. This is usually a black, fuzzy mold that  is readily apparent that can be cut away or killed with a salt/vinegar solution.

  Most of the deaths from "bath tub" cheeses are fresh cheeses (not aged) that are consumed immediately and bad sanitation practices or bad raw materials were used.

[capozzoli]

Wow, thanks for the info.

Sounds to me like home cheese making should be illegal.

Seriously though, what do you guys think about  kids drinking raw milk? We have a gallon coming to a drop off point from an Amish farmer.

The wife now no longer wants to drink it because of the CDC's warnings about consuming raw milk and cheeses made from raw milk.

[tubercle]

Wow, thanks for the info.

Sounds to me like home cheese making should be illegal.

Seriously though, what do you guys think about  kids drinking raw milk? We have a gallon coming to a drop off point from an Amish farmer.

The wife now no longer wants to drink it because of the CDC's warnings about consuming raw milk and cheeses made from raw milk.

  Cheeses made from raw milk is safe and actually much better for you. They have to be aged at least 60 days by most state's regulations. At that point the pH and all the other things I don't understand makes the cheese where the baddies can't grow.

 Raw milk is getting a bad rap for some political reason. Don't know what or who but somebody's pocket is getting lined.

From Wikipedia:

"Pasteurization was first used in the United States in the 1890s after the discovery of germ theory to control the hazards of highly contagious bacterial diseases including bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis that was thought to be easily transmitted to humans through the drinking of raw milk.[1] Initially after the scientific discovery of bacteria, no product testing was available to determine if a farmer's milk was safe or infected, so all milk was treated as potentially contagious. After the first test was developed, some farmers actively worked to prevent their infected animals from being killed and removed from food production, or would falsify the test results so that their animals would appear to be free of infection.[2]

When it was first used, pasteurization was thought to make raw milk from any source safer to consume. More recently, farm sanitation has greatly improved and effective testing has been developed for bovine tuberculosis and other diseases, making other approaches to ensuring safety of milk more feasible; however pasteurization continues to be widely used to prevent infected milk from entering the food supply."

 Back to Tubercle:

 Pasteurization kills all organism, good and bad. In raw milk, from what I have read, the good guys keep the bad guys at bay but after pasteurization its open to who ever gets there first. One example I read was to leave a container of raw milk and one of pasteurized on the counter over night. The raw is still safe to drink but the pasteurized is not. Actually leaving out raw milk over night is how you get the cream to separate. I guess it all comes down to handling practices. Raw anything; hamburger, fish chicken, all can be deadly if not handled and stored properly.

[tubercle]

Some pretty good reading material on raw milk from the Cheeseforum:

http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,4346.msg33185.html#msg33185

http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,5106.msg38658.html#msg38658

 There are hundreds of others...

[MrNate]

Don't get me started on how small dairy farmers started getting the shaft in the '70s and '80s.

PA Raw milk, like many other states that have legalized it, is subject to some pretty healthy scrutiny:
http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/007/chapter59/subchapCtoc.html

Here's what it comes down to for me. If I had met the farmer and seen the farm, I'd drink the milk.
If not, I'd make cheese.

[boulderbrewer]

The raw milk I use for cheese is kept for more than 60 days before consumption. This is a government regulation for raw milk cheese producers. I don't have to because I'm confident in our milk handling capabilities ( I made mozerella and used it all within a week, no problems). However that said if I were to buy raw milk from someone I didn't know I would age my cheese for 60 days or pasturize the milk.

For mold Tubercle pretty much sums it up. Black mold is not desireable.

You can always check this forum out to answer your questions. http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php

Cap you drink the milk first and wait a day to see. That said I would only trust the raw milk the I pulled from the teat for my kids and handled it accordingly. Ask the provider would he give the milk to his kids or grandkids?

[capozzoli]

The one I ordered from is three hours away so I dont thinnk I will go there. But, I found another raw milk farm that is much closer. Im gonna go there, maybe this weekend. They have their own cows that are grass fed. Apparently raw milk from cows that are fed on grain and or soy does not have the same "good bacteria" to combat the "bad bacteria".

I think they will give us a tour. This is the farm. http://www.birchwoodfarmdairy.com/

Here is some of the stuff I have been reading. Lots of good info here. http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/

Boulder, what help is it to keep the milk for sixty days? Seems it would go bad before then.

 

[boulderbrewer]

Keep the cheese made from raw milk for 60 days. Wii law.