I saw on the internet an interesting article from Louetta Hill on an easy and relatively quick way to make a blue cheese log out of goat’s milk.  The main problem with implementing this idea was that I found that all the goat’s milk I could locate in Richmond was ultra-pasteurized, and thus useless for cheese making.  I did spot that Wegman’s carried pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized) goat’s milk kefir, and I knew that a cheese could be made out of kefir, just like a cheese can be made out of yogurt.

I therefore bought a quart of the goat’s milk kefir at Wegman’s to try to make a goat’s cheese log (essentially a cheve) as a proof of concept before going further on a second batch to try to add a blue cheese mold.  On one level, this was a complete failure.  Despite adding some rennet (twice), the kefir did not form any curds.  Maybe the kefir culture prevented curd formation, or maybe the kefir was pasteurized at too high a temperature.  On the other hand, draining the kefir for 48 hours in butter muslin, produced something very similar to cream cheese and definitely worth eating.  As the Australian cheesemaker Gavin Webber has said,  often cheese making failures can be quite edible, just in a different form than expected.

The photo shows the kefir after 48 hours draining.  I used it as the base for Kefir Goat Cheese with Roasted Garlic and Caramelized Onion