Week 3 Lab Data Group 4: Cheese

“Your mozzarella is the BEST I’ve EVER seen!” –Professor Jake Morton, 4/17/2026

In the cheesemaking lab this week, our group first focused on making curds with whey, then making both mozzarella from curds and ricotta from whey.

Initial Heating

We set up our station next to the lakeshore, as shown in the following image, next to a goose mom over her nest. Something special about our station is that we have a really shallow fire pit, which we believe might have a significant influence on the final product we obtained. The shallowness means that our pot was barely above the firewood, and also we had to use less firewood at a time.

We started off by heating a gallon of milk with a dissolved rennet pill to 90 degrees. The heating process took twice as long as that of our neighbor group, almost 6 minutes. We speculate that the fire temperature might not be as high since we were not using that much firewood, but at the same time, the short distance might mean our pot was heated evenly as the fire covered the entire bottom. After 30 minutes, the product we obtained is very different from all other groups: instead of floating on top, our curd was at the bottom(still floating), with a thick layer of whey on top. The “clean break” test went very well. Interestingly, the structure of our mixture made cutting a little bit hard, as the curd kept spinning during cutting because it was floating in whey. The following image illustrates the heating after cutting, it can be seen how much whey we got in the pot.

After another 15 minutes of heating, we separated the curds from the whey. Besides the initial draining process, Caleb also manually squeezed and condensed the curds into a ball. The two following images show our setup for the drainage process and also how Caleb was squeezing and condensing the curds.

Mozzarella

After separating the curds and the whey, our group was divided into two groups for different projects. Caleb and Madeleine went to make mozzarella with the curds at the mozzarella station. During this period, the data wasn’t greatly recorded, but we knew the initial curds were 514g, subtracting the amount put in the pot, 384g of curds were used. The biggest pity is that we didn’t get to weigh the mozzarella, as it was too good, and people started eating it before it left the mozzarella station. Regarding why the mozzarella tastes so good, we have the speculation that the extra layer of whey on top of the pot during the initial heating might have made the ratio of solid and liquid content in our curds slightly different from others. The following is an image of Caleb with his awesome mozzarella ball.

The following image shows the stretching of the curds during mozzarella making.

The following image shows dipping the mozzarella ball in salt water.

People are all enjoying the awesome mozzarella ball!

Ricotta

Zoe and I were commissioned to make the Ricotta cheese with the two bottles of whey we obtained. This project was relatively less successful in comparison to mozzarella making, but it was still a lot of fun. In this section, we encountered more problems with controlling the shallow fire.

As we put the pot onto the fire again, the temperature of the fire must be higher than when we were during the initial heating, since the overall process went much quicker. However, we didn’t realize this until 9 minutes into heating because we were placing the thermometer at the same position as during the initial heating. The removal of curds had lessened the depth of the whey, meaning that we are only capturing the temperature of the surface, which is much lower than the actual temperature. When we realized this, we hurried through the process of adding salt and vinegar, but couldn’t prevent the mixture from boiling at 20 minutes mark. Thus, we took the pot off the fire.

Since we took the pot off the fire so early, it might not have absorbed enough heat, as it started to cool down quickly. At this point, the formation of the whey cheese in the center top actually looks promising. Then the temperature dropped below 185 degrees, and the cheese began sinking. We decided to reheat the pot, but because of the shallowness of our fire, most of the firewood was gone, so the heat wasn’t hot enough to bring it up to over 185 degrees. Then, we just drained the whey and condensed the remaining cheese.

Based on the amount of whey and milk we added, subtracting the weight of the curds added, the ratio between whey cheese and rough materials is about 1:100. This might be a much smaller ratio than other groups. We suspect the problem with controlling the fire and temperature might have interrupted the formation process of the whey cheese.

The following image shows the final product of our whey cheese. It can be seen that there are some curds in the middle, while the whey cheese clusters around it. This created the uneven texture, making part of it taste like ricotta, part of it like mozzarella.

Feelings:

• Madeleine:
  • general: Great compared to last week!
  • cutting: So happy, would cut cheese all day, every day!
• Zoe
  • general: Content!
  • split: Satisfying, cool as hell!
• Caleb
  • general: Great!
  • squeezing: Lots of fun!
• Losh
  • general: Great!

In general, our group really enjoyed the cheesemaking lab. As we didn’t get the precise weight of the mozzarella cheese, based on the weight of the curds, we can estimate that we made roughly 600g of cheese in total, combining mozzarella and whey cheese. We used about 4300g of milk, meaning that there is about a 1:8 ratio between cheese product and milk rough ingredient.

Table 1: Heating Process

Process	Temperature(Fahrenheit)	Time
Initial stage	60 degrees	0
Initial heating to 90 degrees	90 degrees	6min
10 min after removed from the fire	88 degrees
Reheat to 90 degrees	90 degrees	54s
After cutting the curds	86 degrees
Reheat to 90 degrees	90 degrees	3min
Heating the whey	90 degrees	4min
Heating the whey	120 degrees	9.5min
Heating the whey	boiling/200 degrees	20min

Table 2: Weight

Item Name	Weight(including container)(gram)	Weight(gram)
Milk	4015	3908
Rennet		a pill
Water		1/4c
Jar 1		793
Jar 2		788
Whey(Jar 1)	2619	1826
Whey(Jar 2)	2599	1811
Whey		3637
Vinegar		4 1/2c
Salt		1/2 teaspoon
Added milk		436
Curds		514
Curds added to whey		130
Remaining whey(Jar 1)	2360	1567
Remaining whey(Jar 2)	2251	1463
Remaining whey		3030
Whey difference		607
Mozzarella		Didn’t get to measure before people started eating
Ricotta		170