I spend a lot of time handing milk in various forms. I work with it all the way from beginning to end, udder to end product (i.e. cheese, butter). This is good and bad... Good because I control the quality of it bad because it limits my processing time. It's hard to get anything else done when your life is consumed by an abundance of milk.
I currently make cheese in a 6 gallon pot. Not nearly big enough for the volume of milk we're getting daily. I have a 25 gallon steam kettle to be turned into a cheese vat but that is a little bit away yet with some details to be worked out. But I need it now is the problem because I get 8-10 gallons of milk a day. That would put me making cheese every other day. Right now I'm desperately trying to keep up and failing miserably. All I would ever do is milk cows and make cheese (oh and wash all the equipment) if I actually could keep up. The end of the week is fairly nice though, as a good deal goes out the door for fluid milk sales.
So my goal today is to get three batches of cheese made today. So far I have Basil Queso Fresco in the press. It has a short press time of only 6 hours and next up is getting cow milk Manchego going. I'll finish off with a 4 gallon batch of mozzarella.
As a note, I've found mozzarella to be a good cheese for my older milk, generally 2 weeks old. I've done it with fresh milk as well but I try to save that for the pressed cheeses. Another good cheese for old milk is Queso Blanco so long the milk isn't sour. Funny things happen if the milk is sour.
