Feta Cheese - 2nd Attempt - Successful!!!

 My 2nd attempt of making Feta Cheese worked!!! I got the new dairy thermometer yesterday in the mail and promptly thawed some of my goats milk to try to make Feta Cheese again.

I took pictures of the process along the way.

This is the pot of goats milk with buttermilk added for the culture, heating up to 86 degrees

Once it is heated up you need to let it rest for 1 hour and then you add an ingredient called Rennet, this helps the milk to congeal.  Once added the milk needs to rest again for another hour. Once the hour is up this is what your milk should look like.

Milk is now gel like, you can see the milk pulls away from the pot cleanly (top left corner of pot)

Next you need to cut the curd.

Curds cut in 1/2 inch cubes

Then you need to heat up the curds to 86 degrees again and stir gently for 5 to 10 minutes.

Cheese curds heated up and stirred

Next you pour the cheese curds and whey (liquid) into a cheesecloth lined colander.  I used some fine weaved fabric I had on hand that I sterilized.  I have kept the whey as this is what you make Ricotta cheese from. I'll be trying to make that today.

Cheese curds draining

Next you need to tie up your cloth and hang it over a bowl.  The bowl will catch any remaining whey that will drip out while you hang your cheese.  This part took 5 hours.

Remaining whey draining from the cheese curds

When your cheese curds are finished draining and you open up your cloth this is what you get (see pic below), this is now cheese.

Homemade Feta Cheese

We are now 7 hours into the process but still aren't done.  Next you need to slice the Feta Cheese and place in a clean dish, you have to salt both sides and cover.  It will then stand at room temperature 12 to 24 hours. We let it stand for 12 hours.

Feta Cheese, salted and sliced

You could actually eat it at this point but the recipe says it will taste better if you brine it, soak in salt water, for a few days.  So I decided to go ahead and do that.

Feta Cheese in Brine (salted water)

Now that I got it right it should be easier to make the next time.  This is a very small batch since I am still not getting much milk from Priscilla, most is still going to her babies.  This recipe was made with a quart of goat's milk.  I'm hoping once we start getting more milk I can make this recipe with 1 gallon of goat's milk, that way I won't need to be making it as often.

Feta Cheese is a favorite in this house.  We eat alot of salad here and usually always have Feta Cheese on it.  It will be nice to have Homemade Feta Cheese for our salads now.  I have calculated that we spend approximately $30 a month just on Feta Cheese.  That's a lot once I thought about it.  Now we won't have to.

Be sure to check back in 4 to 7 days,  I'll let you know how it tastes.