CurdCraft
The Journal
Milk Basics: Fat, Protein, and Why They Drive Your Cheese Yield
Fat and protein are the two numbers that decide how much cheese a batch of milk will actually make. Here's what they mean, where to find them, and how they change your results.
Rennet 101: Animal, Microbial, and Vegetable Coagulants Explained
Rennet is what turns liquid milk into a solid curd. Here's the difference between animal, microbial, and vegetable rennet, and how to pick and dose the right one.
Mesophilic vs Thermophilic Cultures: Choosing the Right Bacteria
Every cultured cheese depends on the right bacteria working at the right temperature. Here's the practical difference between mesophilic and thermophilic starter cultures.
Building a Cheese Cave: Temperature and Humidity at Home
Aging a cheese well means holding a steady temperature and humidity for weeks or months. Here's how home cheesemakers build a cave without a real cellar.
Reading pH and Acidity Through a Cheese Make
Acidity, not the clock, is what actually times a cheese make. Here's how titratable acidity works, and why it matters more than how many minutes have passed.
Brining Cheese: Why It Matters and How to Get It Right
A salt brine does more than season a cheese — it firms the rind, slows spoilage, and shapes how the cheese ages. Here's how to get the strength right.
Troubleshooting Your First Batches: Common Home Cheesemaking Mistakes
Nearly every cheesemaker's first few batches go a little sideways. Here are the most common causes of a weak set, a bitter cheese, or a rind gone wrong — and what to check first.
Choosing Milk for Cheese: What Actually Matters
Milk choice sets the ceiling on everything downstream. You can rescue a mediocre make with good technique, but you cannot make more cheese than the milk…
What a 20% Brine Actually Means
Almost every brining instruction you will read specifies a saturated or near-saturated brine, and most quote a figure somewhere near 20%. What that…
Reading Titratable Acidity Through a Make
pH meters get the attention, but the older measurement — titratable acidity — is the one many cheese recipes are actually written around, and it tells you…
How Much Weight Your Cheese Loses in the Cave
A cheese going into the cave and the same cheese coming out are different weights, and the difference is entirely water. Nothing else leaves. The dry matter…
Scaling a Cheese Recipe Without Wrecking It
Cheese recipes are written for a batch size the author happened to use — four litres, two gallons, seven-point-six litres because that is what a US…