You’re not seeing double. One tankless water heater didn’t give us enough throughput, so we installed a second one just like it.
We chose tankless for two reasons: first, because it’s more efficient than a boiler. And second, in the summer we’ll heat with solar and the inline design of the tankless makes it easy to bypass the heaters completely.
Will the two heaters give us enough heat transfer to pasteurize milk so we can make fresh cheeses? We’re testing it right now!
ShowMeTheCurry.com offers this video (via YouTube) showing how to make paneer, a fresh Indian-style cheese that’s much like ricotta. It’s easy! For a cloth, we use “flour sack cloth” that they sell at the local 99 Cent store.
They also suggest using the leftover whey as a vegetarian stock instead of chicken or beef. We haven’t tried that yet, but we do use it for making bread.
I took this photo at a Bristol Farms in Los Angeles: a huge imported Swiss cheese. For reference, the blocks of cheese are about a pound– this half wheel must have weighed fifty pounds easily!
Last week, a 3 hour test of the vat resulted in a 16 degree rise in vat temperature, and I learned we had it hooked up wrong and needed more water flow.
This past week, I corrected the plumbing and installed a faster pump. Yesterday, I learned that our tankless hot water heater is the choke point. It’s rated at 4.2 gallons per minute– enough for an entire home, but not enough to pasteurize a hundred gallons of milk.
In a moment of inspiration (or an attack of insanity) I installed a valve to allow water to bypass the tankless heater, thereby giving me the option to increase the flow, though at a lower temperature. I used the tankless to heat up the 320 gallon water reservoir, since it’s snowing and there’s no help from the sun this weekend. Then I used the already-heated water, in combination with the tankless heater, to heat the vat.
The result: it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to heat from 58 degrees to 85 degrees, an increase of 27 degrees. That’s hot enough to make cheese– I call that a successful test.
It’s not enough heat transfer to pasteurize, which requires heating to 145 degrees. For that, I’ll need additional water heating, either from the sun or from a second tankless heater, which will take a couple of weeks to arrive and hook up. But at least we can now make aged cheeses!
I’ve been trying for two weeks to hook up the new cheese vat/pasteurizer. I hadn’t realized that the pump wouldn’t pull water from the tank to the vat, it would only push. So I had to re-plumb and re-wire the pump in the other room. Then it didn’t pump, and when I disassembled it, found that a piece of insulation had lodged in the impeller. Then I discovered that I had hooked up the vat backwards (there are no labels telling which is the inlet and outlet).
Finally, it’s hooked up. Water comes in from the solar hot water tank, runs through a tankless heater to boost the temp, and into the vat. An atmospheric-pressure tank (i.e. unpressurized) encloses the bottom of the insulated vat. When water reaches a specified level, it begins to run out of the vat. I installed a second pump to return the expended water to the solar tank.
Tomorrow, we’ll fill the tank with a hundred gallons of water and see if it heats! (No sense wasting milk on an experiment.) If it works, we’ll have the dairy inspector out to license our “new” pasteurizer.
“Scientific investigation… has made industrial cheese making more efficient, which is a less pleasant thought, for the inevitable concomitant of idustrial efficiency has been a standard of meditocrity…” –The Cheese Handbook (Bruce H. Axler), available on Google Books.
Dairying has a long and distinguished history. The passage above comes from J. Twaley, Dairying Exemplified, or The Business of Cheesemaking (London, 1784) p. 18, courtesy of Google Books.
Note the assumption that daries were run by women. Historically, milking cows and the associated dairy production was considered “women’s work,” inappropriate for men. Thus well into the industrial revolution, women held a monopoly on dairying that provided skilled employment. However, according to Deborah Simonton (A History of European Women’s Work: 1700 to the present, New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 122) by the late 1800s in most of Europe dairying had become the province of men in factories.
In India, they use a fresh cheese called “paneer.” It’s very similar to ricotta, however it’s pressed into a semisoft block instead of a loose cheese. Making it is also similar– and easy! You’ll need:
1 gallon milk
4 Tbs lemon juice
In a heavy pot (I recommend non-stick), bring the milk to a full boil. Watch it carefully: when it begins to boil it will very quickly boil over, so remove it from the heat immediately.
Stir in the lemon juice and continue stirring until the curds begin to separate (about 3 minutes).
Let the milk stand for ten minutes while the curds form.
Strain the curds in a cloth-lined colander. I find that a cloth napkin works well for this.
When the liquid has mostly drained, tie the corners of the cloth and hang the curd (over the sink works well) to allow it to drain more completely– about an hour. Then place the cloth-encased curd on a plate and flatten it. Place another plate upside down over the curd, and put a pound or two of weight (a can of tomatoies, for example) on the top plate. Press for half an hour.
Cut the curd into 1/2 inch cubes (or whatever size you prefer). Use right away, or refrigerate for later use. A gallon of milk will make about 3 cups of paneer.
Ricotta is a fresh cheese, and is often made from the whey left over from the cheesemaking process. It captures a protein called albumin from the milk, which is left behind when making
Ricotta can also be made with milk. In fact, you can make it easily with just the ingredients you’re likely to have in your home kitchen:
1 gallon Milk
1/4 cup Vinegar
You will also need:
Heavy saucepan
Colander
A thin cloth for straining (a thin cloth napkin or flour cloth works well; don’t use coarse cheese cloth because your curds will go right through it)
Heat the milk slowly, stirring constantly as it gets hot, to just short of boiling. At sea level that will be 200 degrees; at our altitude it’s closer to 192.
Add the vinegar. If the milk is hot enough, it will instantly curdle.
Turn off the heat and remove the pot from the heat to prevent the curds from sticking to the bottom. Let the mixture cool.
Arrange the cloth in the colander. Strain the mixture through the cloth. (If desired, save the whey for making bread.)
When most of the liquid has drained out, gather the corners of the cloth together, tie them in a knot, and suspend the curds in the sink (or over a container). Let them hang until they stop dripping, usually a couple of hours.
Add salt if desired.
Use or freeze the ricotta promptly, because it has a shelf life of about a week.
