Beginner's Hard Cheese Kit

Now Featuring Our High-Strength Rennet Tablets

See how to gift a kit containing temperature-sensitive goodies.

The Hard Cheese Kit Makes 9 Delicious Cheeses:

• Large Curd Cottage Cheese
• Feta
• Farmhouse Cheddar
• Colby
• Monterey Jack
• Gouda
• Cotswold
• Leicester
• Ricotta

Why pay gourmet prices when you can learn to make your very own "additive and preservative-free" cheeses? All your family will join you in the fun of this tradition!

This is a Beginner Cheese Kit, ideal for those with no cheese making experience.

The kit comes with a detailed easy to follow directions demystifying the steps in the art of cheese making, and can be used with regular full cream milk, straight from the supermarket.

How Does It Work?

Making Hard Cheese is fun and easy, and most hard cheeses are made with these simple steps;

1. Milk is warmed
2. Starter culture and rennet are added
3. The milk coagulates into a single curd
4. The curd is cut and stirred to drain off whey
5. The curd is sometimes heated and/or pressed, to remove even more whey
6. The curd is moulded and shaped into a cheese, salting takes place before or after this process
7. The cheese is matured or aged under controlled conditions

This Kit Contains:

• Instruction Booklet
• 200 mm Dairy Thermometer
• 10 x High Strength Rennet Tablets (Suitable for Vegetarians) (Up to 40 batches)
• 2 x Direct Inoculation Mesophilic Hard Curd Starter Culture (100 Litre sachet - from SACCO)
• 165 mm Cheese Basket and Follower
• Sample Block of Cheese Wax
• Natural bristle Wax Brush
• Loose Weave Cheese Cloth
• 50 ml Calcium Chloride
• 250 gm Cheese Salt
• 2 x Free Sterile Jars, for storing the culture

You Will Need: (most of which can be found in your kitchen)

• Stainless steel pot to place your milk in large enough to hold eight to ten litres
• A second, larger pot to place your first pot in, to act as a water jacket, so you can indirectly heat your milk
• Large stainless steel or enamel colander
• Stainless steel perforated spoon
• Stainless steel curd knife
• Stainless steel ladle
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Mini measuring spoons (optional)
• Somewhere to age your cheese (10 to 15 deg C)
• Cheese Press - Stainless Steel with 22kg spring

How Much Cheese Does A Hard Cheese Kit Make?

All of these cheeses use the same culture, and our new kit comes with 2 sachets of culture containing a total of 24 doses, producing up to 13 kilograms of cheese. Make all of the cheeses, or make your favourite cheese 24 times!

How Do I Store The Ingredients?

We ship these products Australia-wide, however, this kit contains ingredients that do require long-term storage in a freezer, on arrival. Extended time out of a freezer will decrease the shelf life.

What Is The Shelf Life of Cheese Cultures?

When stored correctly freeze-dried lactic cultures are typically viable long after any date on the pack, and will last for years in the freezer.

What Is A Hard Cheese?

There exists a wide variety of hard cheeses, which are popular due to their excellent grating and slicing qualities, strong flavours and long shelf life. Many of the properties of hard cheeses are due to their minimal moisture content, which can range from medium dry such as Gouda to very dry as in the case of Romano. Hard cheeses are generally matured for several months or even years.

These cheeses are also called 'hard curd cheeses' as a clean break is called for and the curd is then cut and worked before draining and pressing.

How Do You Dose Cheese Culture For Domestic Use?

We are often asked, "if my culture pack is enough for 100 litres, how do I work out how much to use for four or eight litres"? We supply a sterile jar with the culture so that you can see how much culture you have available to inoculate 100 litres of milk. Estimating by eye is acceptable as this is a living culture that will soon grow, and too much can't hurt.

Step By Step Videos

1.   Indirect Heating Milk With a Water Jacket
2.   Adding The Calcium Chloride
3.  Adding Cheese Culture
4.  Adding Rennet
5.  Checking For a Clean Break & Cutting The Curd
6.  Stirring & Cooking The Curd
7.  Draining The Curd
8.  Dry Salting The Curd
9.  Pressing The Curd
10.  Drying The Cheese
11.  Waxing The Cheese