of cheese and failure

So Carter and I tried cheesemaking on Saturday. I’d ordered the basic hard cheese kit from these guys and we discovered that Spartan milk (e.g. Goodrich’s) is pasteurized but not homogenized (which is important). So, we put a 4-quart pot in a five gallon pot to make a double boiler and fired up some feta. The process is basically:

1. Bring a gallon of whole milk to 86ish for an hour.
2. Pitch a packet of mesophilic bacterial culture and let it sit another hour.
3. Pitch a half of a rennet tablet, stir, and wait 30 minutes for it to set to a stiff yogurt/tofu consistency.
4. Cut the curd into 0.25-1″ cubes and stir while bringing the pot up to 95ish.
5. After an hour of heat and occasional stirring, the lumpy curds will start to separate from the whey.

This is the point where we may have dorked up. The feta is supposed to be strained through a colander, let to set, and then cut and put in brine. Other cheeses, like the cheddar we have pressing right now, are poured into a muslin-lined colander/mold and pressed with 10-20lb and occasionally turned so that even more of the whey presses out - this takes about 24 hours and greatly reduces the moisture of the cheese. The feta instructions just said to strain it and let it set, and we used a rather wide colander, so we ended up with a thin slab instead of a block. it also retained too much moisture, so when we put it into the brine jars, it ended up dissolving a little around the ouside. I suspect that we might be able to save it if we strain it all through the muslin and let it sit significantly longer, but it might be pointless. Still, even if we have to toss it, we’re only out a gallon of milk, some culture, and some rennet.
I have absolutely no idea why we forgot to contact dluke. Want to try a gouda this weekend?