Week 3 Lab Data: Group 2

General Steps/Qualitative Data and Reflections:

Set Up:
Our set up began by collecting all of our necessary ingredients and tools for making cheese. This included collecting our pot, oven mitts, a knife, cheese cloth, colander, jars, measuring cups, a thermometer, a rennet tablet, a gallon of milk, vinegar, salt, water, a ladle, bowls, and a scale. Some of these items we had to share amongst other groups, which was not an issue for most of the items except for the thermometer, which will be touched on later.
Once we had all of our materials prepped we began building a fire, as well as weighing and measuring out our ingredients (see quantitative section for full details). We were slightly concerned about maintaining the fire given the slightly heavy winds, but the fire ended up working out perfectly, the wind helped if anything. At this point the members of our group felt proud and optimistic for what was to come. We mixed our rennet tablet in water, made the vinegar and water mixture and mixed it with the milk and were ready to go.

First Step – Heating up the Milk:
Once our fire was ready, we did not yet have access to a thermometer, but we instinctively put our pot of milk over the fire hoping to be able to judge when it hit 90 degrees (the necessary temperature to then add a rennet-water mixture to) based off of the group next to us, who had access to a thermometer. This was ultimately the wrong decision. Once the group next to us hit around 85 or so degrees, we asked to borrow the thermometer and upon checking our milk, we had hit over 115 degrees, well above the required temperature. It is likely that our fire was hotter and more intense than the group next to us, thus allowing for the milk to heat up faster. We took our pot off the heat and put it in the shade in hopes of letting it cool down back to 90 degrees. Due to the intensity of the sun and heat on Mai-Fete Island, our milk took over 30 minutes to cool down. As we watched other groups make their curds while we had to wait to complete our first step, our optimism waned slightly. For future labs, it is ideal that all groups have their own thermometer. For later steps we were more cautious and were constantly switching the thermometer back and forth between the other group, which allowed us to be more precise, but was a hassle. The pot lids are extremely heavy and hot and the thermometer is quite hard to place directly into the milk, leading to us spending excessive amounts of time simply transferring the thermometer back and forth.

Second Step – Milk and Rennet:
After over a half an hour of waiting, our milk had finally reached 90 degrees, at which point we added the rennet mixture. Since it was so sunny out, we simply left our pot off the heat for the 30 minutes we needed to maintain it at 90 degrees, there was not a large problem with it cooling down too much. We knew our fire was so hot, so keeping it there would have certainly caused it to go over 90 degrees. With a black cast iron pot on a hot, sunny day, leaving it off the heat and in the sun worked perfectly.

Third Step – Curds:
After waiting 30 minutes, maintaining the mixture at 90 degrees, we were ready to see how our curd formed. Slightly nervous, we all stuck our fingers into the curds at a 45 degree angle and it exceeded or expectations. Our Professor, Jake, was amazed at the quality of the curds. Despite us overheating the milk and having to have it sit for longer than it would have normally, our curds still came out beautiful. It proved to us that this is an imprecise art. There were no thermometers thousands of years ago, if anything we had the most authentic experiential experience. We did things by feel, made adjustments when needed, and we made a curd that looked better than groups who used a thermometer the entire time. It is about technique and care, not fancy gadgets. We then cut the curds length and width wise into roughly 3 cm long squares and let it sit in the pot for around 15 minutes, occasionally stirring them around.

Fourth Step – Straining the Curds:
We then lined a colander with cheesecloth and strained out our curds, leaving the whey in a jar. We admittedly lost a decent amount of whey when pouring, which will be reflected in the quantitative section. Since we were so far behind, we did not wait 30 minutes to let gravity strain the curds, but rather used our hands to efficiently squeeze out all of the whey. This method worked great, perhaps even better than just letting the curds sit in the cheesecloth.

Fifth Step – Making the Mozzerella:
The making of the mozzarella was a mostly experiential experience for our group, as the logistics, meaning the temp of hot/cold water, salt levels, etc. were mostly left up to the group in charge of the mozzarella making station, see their lab write-up for more details. We cut our curd into three pieces and followed a simple process. Submerge it in hot water, stretch it, back in hot water, stretch it, back in hot water, and then a plunge in cold water. We found that the piece of mozzarella that was easiest to stretch (and therefore produced the best ball of cheese) was the one that was cut into the smallest piece. In retrospect, we should have cut our ball of curd into more pieces that were smaller.

Sixth Step – Making the Whey Cheese:
For our lab group, the making of the whey cheese was a failure, as we failed to produce any measurable amounts of cheese from the whey. There is much to attribute this to, but the largest reason likely being heat. Our fire had died down by the time we were making the whey cheese, meaning it did not have the capacity to keep the whey at the sufficient temperature to make the cheese. For further information on making whey cheese, consult other groups.

Quantitative Data:
Ingredient Measurements:
3,891 grams of Milk (one gallon roughly)
One rennet tablet (to be mixed with ¼ cup water)
¼ cup vinegar
2 cups water (to be mixed with vinegar)
¼ cup salt
2 liters water for cool salt bath

Heating of Milk:
NOTE: Temperature of the fire was not taken during the course of the lab due to the limited access to a thermometer, please consult qualitative section for further details on strength of the fire
Timeline:
1:42 pm: Pot of milk added to the fire
1:59 pm: Milk temperature at 115 degrees fahrenheit
2:00 pm: Milk taken off of the fire
2:28 pm: Milk reaches required temperature of 90 degrees fahrenheit
2:47 pm: Curds formed
3:06 pm: Curds ready to be strained
3:20 pm: Curds fully strained
Mass Step by Step:
Weight of Initial Milk: 3,891 grams
Weight of Whey after “Fourth Step”: 2,420 grams
Weight of Curds after “Fourth Step”: 577 grams
“Lost” Mass (as mentioned in Qualitative Section): 894 g

Percentages (rough estimates):
After “Fourth Step”, in the initial milk mixture…
~14.8% became curd
~62.2% became whey
~23.0% was lost (likely due to spillage, residue in the pot, etc.)

Whey Cheese Making (a failure for this group so data likely not reflective of the normal process):
Weight of initial amount of whey: 2,420 grams
Weight of whey after attempting to make whey cheese: 2,224 grams
Weight of whey cheese: N/A (sufficient product was not produced)