As a fellow cheesemaker, I’ve been following your cheesemaking adventures. Let me immediately tell you that because I’ve had more than my share of non-curded cheese attempts, I’ve become an expert in using whey and curdled milk in creative ways! Your last attempt looks pretty nice, so you must be making headway. However, based on my own lessons learned, please allow me to ask a question re your chosen pot. The pic of your pot looks like aluminium. Is it aluminium? If it is, that could be the reason for your weak curds (aluminium reacts with the normal activity of milk acids during cheesemaking which inhibits the usual lowering of the acids, thereby causing soft or no curds). Most cheesers use stainless steel pots, but actually, any non-reactive surface will be OK.

If I have misspoken, just slap me up the side of my head, and I’ll stop. Good luck with your ongoing cheese adventures - it’s fun, isn’t it?
John

Jabbett,
Yes, I should have surmised that if your cheeses could look as good as they do, you wouldn’t be trying to make them in an aluminum pot! I too use the New England Cheesemaking rennet, and have noticed a less than expected curding - so perhaps that, and the goatsmilk too, are contributors. I’d try a bit more rennet and see.

As I intimated, I’m a pure novice at this, but have done TONS of research and feel ready for some of the more exotic stuff - I’ll try a blue built from a simple farmers cheese next. It should only need 2/3 months aging.

I have done a few fresh cheeses that have turned out well, and I especially love making cheesecake with the simple Queso Fresca, rather than the cream cheese type.

I’ve also made both the cultured and the “vinegared” fresh cheeses (the first melts, the latter does not!), and have pressed a few successfully to a sliceable stage - the cultured had a nicer taste.

I’m looking for a used fridge at a good price to put in the garage and use for cheese aging - although I could probably get away with just putting it on a shelf in the garage in our SW Oregon winter with similar results!
John

You don’t mention salting here anywhere. A few other thoughts. How did you determine when you had a clean break? I gather that vegetable rennets tend to produce a more brittle curd so you might try using chymosin (the active enzyme from calf rennet, now being produced by fungal and bacterial processes) which I know is available with a hechsher.

Perhaps a larger issue is that if the goat milk has been ultra-pasteurized (as the generally-available stuff here tends to be) the proteins will have been largely denatured which will give you a terrible curd structure as the normally long protein chains that bind it together will have been broken up.

Another thought is that if the cultures were already in the milk when you started heating it, such a rapid rise in temperature may have harmed their growth which would mean lower lactic acid production and thus poor curd formation as the acidity is required for propper setting. You might try and monitor the acidity with litmus paper or the like.

The breakup of your curds is what led to the crumbly texture. As for the flavor, it’d take a fair bit of work ina cheese like this to overcome the goatiness. Additionally, muenster is traditionally a smear cheese, witht he orange outer coating being a layer of b. linens growing on the surface. Factory-made muenster tends to just have was as the coating and they do other things to it to make it muenster-ish tasting. I haven’t studied up enough on it to know what you should smear it with to encourage the growth of these particular bacteria though.

Also, whatever the recipe may have said, I’m fairly sure that traditionallu muenster is *not* pressed - it is packed loosely into perforated containers to drain under its own weight. Pressing it takes out too much of the moisture. These are the problems you run into with home cheesemaking books (much like all the “cheddar” recipes that don’t involve the process of cheddaring).

Just a few thoughts.