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ajacksified | 4 years ago
Re: "don't make cheese with raw milk. You'll regret it." If the only non-homogenized milk I can find is raw, is it safe to home-pasteurize it (63C for 30 mins,) or am I better off using the homogenized stuff?
I've only made ricotta and mozzarella so far, but I've been thinking about diving into hard cheeses soon. I was just talking to my partner about cheesemaking over the weekend, so a random cheesemaking article on Hacker News is rather serendipitous...
cheese_goddess|4 years ago
That's something you need to decide for yourself, depending on your risk tolerance and considering who you'll share your cheese with. Me, I make all my cheese with home-pasteurised milk. I buy it raw and I pasteurise it in my cheese vat. I think that this makes it much safer than raw milk, although probably not as safe as milk pasteurised in a dairy plant. The combination of heat and time in home pasteurisation is just as effective as the process most commonly used in dairy plants (72°C for 15 seconds) but there are more opportunities for post-pasteurisation contamination in a home kitchen and anyway I'm an amateur so I can always bungle something without even knowing until it's too late.
Btw, the reason we do it this way at home (63°C for 30') is because for pasteurisation to be done right every milk particle must be heated to the target temperature for the indicated time, which is much harder to do when the duration is short. For the same reason I stir gently but constantly while the milk is on the stove and also make sure that the needle of my milk thermometer is one or two degrees above the target temperature, because thermometers always have some error and it's best to err on the side of overheating than not-pasteurising. Also, pasteurisation temperatures are standardised for cow's milk with 3.5% fat so if you have fatter milk, say from Jersey cows or from ewes (as I do) you need to increase the temperature (so I pasteurise ewe's milk at 65°C for 30').
You can find more information about this kind of pasteurisation if you search online for "Long Time Low Temperature pasteurisation" (or "LTLT pasteurisation") or "vat-pasteurisation". Here's a very comprehensive report on pasteurisation in general:
https://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/code/proposals/documents/S...
To be honest I used to think that home-pasteurisation is just as safe as industrial pasteurisation but I had a conversation with a professional cheesemaker who told me it basically isn't and recommended that I age my cheeses for two or three months to be sure (as a general rule, the longer cheese has aged for, the safer it is to eat). To be more honest, I mostly do, but I also make some fresh cheeses that I eat within a couple of weeks. I expect though that if I was really messing it up with sanitation, I'd be seeing some signs like early blowing more often (currently I'm at 0 times, that is). So I think I'm doing it right. Anyway for me home pasteurisation is well below my risk threshold so I'm fine with it.
On the other hand, the big problem with microbes is that you can't see them, so unless you have access to a bio lab everything you do to get rid of them is basically ritual and your faith in your procedures is er, well, it's just that, faith. So it's up to you to decide what you think is safe. In fact I know plenty of folks who swear by raw milk and have been making cheese with it for many years. But I also know of professional cheesemakers who have killed off a few of their clients with their raw milk cheeses, so I feel my responsibility is to warn people against it.
ajacksified|4 years ago
I have friends who raise goats, and it sounds like it's time to give them a call. I'll err on the side of safety and read more on home pasteurization. Thanks for the info!