So I periodically get an itch to learn some homesteading skills, and the turn has come to cheese.
After an initial look, it seems hard to do in my apartment, especially fitting a good cheese press, and a climate controlled storage.
Is it feasible to make cheese from an apartment? Do you know of any resources for suitable adaptations or other handy tips? Have you tried yourself? What worked well and what is better avoided altogether?
Start with paneer or ricotta. These cheeses are very similar and are the easiest cheeses to make - you don’t need any specialized ingredients, just milk, salt, and acid (vinegar, lemon juice, etc.).
To press it, I wrap it in cheese cloth, put it in between two cutting boards, and weigh it down with bricks. I just grabbed some $0.50 pavers from the garden centre and wrapped them in aluminum foil.
Fresh mozzarella is the next easiest cheese. You’ll need to buy rennet and some food safe, heat resistant gloves, since you have to work the cheese while it’s hot. I have made fresh mozzarella in a condo / flat and it worked out just fine.
I have also made farmhouse cheddar but never in an apartment. I’d recommend picking up a kit the first time you make anything more complicated than mozzarella. The kit I picked up included everything needed except the milk - rennet, cultures, non-iodized salt, a form, a jar of coating and a brush to apply it.
If you’re making any kind of aged cheese, you will need a setup for keeping it at the right temperature and humidity for at least a few weeks. This might be the most challenging part for apartment cheese because the temp needs to be lower than typical room temperature but higher than refrigerator temperature. I picked up a combo hygrometer / thermometer and set up a cambro box with a sliding lid in my basement. Temp wasn’t a problem because my basement is exactly in the target temperature range year-round. I used damp paper towel and the sliding lid to increase or decrease humidity as needed.
Making the cheese took about 5 hours (don’t do this on a weekday - ask me how I know). You don’t actually need a cheese press to form the cheese, although it’s certainly simpler. I ended up pressing mine by piling bricks, canned tomatoes, and a big pot full of water on top of the form. The pot tipped over some time after midnight because the cheese didn’t settle evenly but fortunately it tipped backward toward the cabinets and didn’t spill all over the floor, so it was straightforward to correct.
Be warned that 1gal / 4L of milk produces a tiny amount of cheese. I think we ended up with 250g of cheddar in the end.
Wow. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.
Sounds like I need a little bit of kit and then to get going, or would you recommend any particular resource to learn with?
Happy to help!
The only thing you need for ricotta or paneer that you may not already have on hand is cheesecloth. I’d recommend starting with that and seeing if you actually enjoy cheesemaking before buying any equipment.
I can’t find the recipe I used online anymore, but it’s basically “heat the milk until just shy of a boil, remove from the heat, pour in lemon juice or vinegar until it starts to curdle, cover it and wait 10 minutes, then drain, wrap, and press”. A strainer lined with cheesecloth is the best way to drain the curd. You can save the whey to make biscuits or something.
Edit: For mozzarella, I used this recipe from Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-fresh-mozzarella-from-scratch-recipe
Assuming you enjoy making cheese, you can search for a local cheesemaking supply store to pick up supplies and equipment or order online from some place like makecheese.ca.
Rennet is available as liquid or tablets. Liquid is easier to work with but tablets last longer.
The kit that I bought from makecheese.ca came in a little box that had everything I needed except milk and a thermometer. It included step by step instructions.
If you want to YOLO it and jump right in without using a kit (or if you outgrow cheesemaking by kit), I’d recommend a copy of Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking by Gianaclis Caldwell.
Have fun!