How to Scale Cheesemaking Recipes Up or Down: Rennet, Culture, and More

How to scale cheesemaking recipes up or down

I make a lot of cheese. 

At the time of writing this, I’ve stopped putting ‘make cheese’ in my planner on the days I’ll be making it, because I’m making it every day! At some point in the season this will slow down (sadly), but for now, my head, heart, and stomach are full of cheese and very happy.

One thing that does change from day to day is the amount of cheese that I make: depending on whether I’m making yoghurt as well, how much we are drinking, whether I’m making a recipe that uses a lot of milk, and whether we have any milk left from the day beforehand, I have different amounts of milk to work with from day to day. 

Scaling cheese recipes to fit the amount of milk you have is quite simple, and once you have the hang of it, you don’t have to do much maths, and it just comes together intuitively, like scaling a family meal up or down to feed more or less guests. This is how I do it:

How to adjust the amount of culture

To figure out how much cheese culture to use, first get the recipe you’re using, and then divide the total culture amount by the amount of litres (quarts) of milk. For example, for a typical natural cheese recipe, I’d use 60ml (1/4 cup) of kefir or other homemade liquid culture for 4 litres (1 gallon) milk, so I’d divide this into 4, and end up with 15ml, or 1 tablespoon of liquid culture per litre (quart) of milk. Now, simply multiply that by however many litres or quarts you want to use, and you have the right amount of culture.

With packaged cultures, for small batch cheesemaking the amounts are really really tiny, and it’s pretty much impossible to measure by weight. But if you have a set of tiny measuring spoons and know how much culture to use per gallon of milk, then you’ll easily be able to scale this up or down.

If you’re finding that your cheese is getting too acidic in the timeframe you’re working with, simply reduce the amount of culture. Or, if you’re finding it’s not culturing quickly enough, simply use a bit more.

How to work out rennet dosage

Figuring out the standard dose of rennet per gallon

Different brands of rennet have different dosage rates. ‘1 tablet’ of rennet could refer to an extra-strong tablet that treats 50 litres (12.5 gallons) of milk, or to a small-batch tablet that treats 4 litres (1 gallon) of milk, or to something entirely different. Liquid and powdered rennets also vary in dosage amounts.

To figure out your standard dose of rennet, first check on your jar or bottle of rennet. For example, my liquid rennet says “use 0.5ml per litre of milk”, my extra strong tablets say “use 1 tablet per 50 litres (12.5 gallons) milk” and my small batch tablets say “use 1 tablet per 4 litres (1 gallon) of milk”. These amounts are the standard dose for those particular rennets for cheeses made from cow and goat milk.

How to scale rennet amounts up and down

To figure out how much of this rennet to use for different batch sizes, simply get your standard rennet dose amount from the packet, and if it’s the 50 litre or 4 litre example above, divide it up further, so 1/8 of the extra-strong 50 litre tablet treats 6 litres (6 quarts) milk, or 1/4 of the 1 gallon one treats 1 litre (1 quart) milk, or 5ml (1 teaspoon) of the liquid one treats 10 litres (10 quarts) milk.

And just as you would for culture, multiply (or divide) this number to work with whatever amount of milk you have.

So now you have your standard rennet dose figured out. If you’re making a recipe using significantly less rennet (e.g. chèvre) or extra rennet (e.g. Parmesan or Alpine), simply adjust the dosage to suit the recipe.

I observe my cheeses through the seasons. Sometimes there are less solids in the milk, and I end up with smaller cheese yields, so I might use a 4 litre tablet of rennet to culture 5 or 6 litres of milk, other times, if it’s winter and I want to make a hard cheese, I might use a 4 litre tablet to culture 2 to 3 litres (2 to 3 quarts) of goat milk.

Like culture, the rennet amount is not set in stone, and you can tinker around with the amount of rennet to figure out what makes the kinds of cheeses that you most like.

How to adjust the rennet dosage for sheep milk cheesemaking

Sheep milk needs less rennet than cow and goat milk. To convert any recipe to use sheep milk instead, simply halve the standard dose of rennet.

How to adjust the amount of salt

I have done both brine salting and dry salting, and I find dry salting to be so much simpler.

To adjust a cheese recipe with dry salting, there are three things to consider:

• The first is the amount of milk you started with – for a typical cheese using 1 gallon of goat or cow milk, you’ll want to use around a tablespoon of unrefined salt such as Himalayan salt or Celtic Sea salt.
• Where it gets slightly more complicated is when it comes to cheese yield – if you are making cheese from high solids winter milk and get a bigger cheese yield than usual, you probably want to use a bit more salt than the standard dose. For low solids summer milk with a low cheese yield then you’d want to use a bit less salt.
• For very large wheels of cheese, you’ll need to get the total amount of salt, divide it in half, and then rub half the salt on the cheese as soon as it comes out of the cheese press, and the other half on in a couple of days time. Because of the larger wheel size, the surface to interior ratio is smaller, and the amount of salt that a large wheel of cheese can absorb if you put all the salt on at once may not be enough.

As with the other natural cheesemaking ingredients, the amount of salt that you want to use will also depend on personal tastes, and on the results you are after. Alpine cheeses purposely use less salt, feta uses more. Experience will also play a role: if you’re getting “cats fur” fungus and other unwanted surface moulds, try using more salt next time. If you’re not getting the bloomy white moulds that you want and are getting blue moulds appearing straight away, try cutting back on the salt.