Wow

I'm almost in shock. I guess I knew it but when you actually see it with your own eyes it's another thing. As I wrote in the last post I've had troubles getting a decent curd recently with the store-bought milk I was using. At first I started doubting temperature or cleanliness of tools, then the efficacy of my rennet, but after some reading it was clear that it was the milk's fault. Store bought milk is poor in CaCl2 (Calcium Chloride) because it gets depleted by pasteurisation. That's why most cheesemaking factories working with pasteurized milk need to add CaCl2 to their milk.
Last night I went to visit a farm nearby that sells raw milk to people and apart from the amusing old farmer and his equally amusing son, I got the pleasure of going back home with 5 liters of udder-warm raw milk from beautiful Simmental cows.
I processed it right away and "Oh My!". In 1 hour I had a curd so firm I could have played football with it.
No more store-bought milk for me, thankiuverimucce.