Today I made haloumi, from scratch! But let’s start from the beginning. I’m from Holland, and I’m a cheese head ;-)  Ok fast-forward a bit. I grew up in the city (Amsterdam), although we used to get fresh milk straight from a farm nearby on the Amstel river. Anyhow, I never made cheese before, so with my interest in growing/making stuff from scratch: something to try!

I use the kits from Mad Millie which is a New Zealand based company, and they’ve also been very helpful and responsive when I had some questions. Their stuff can be found at homebrew stores, and interestingly the owner of the homebrew store near me is very knowledgeable so he must’ve been making different cheeses too!

I’ve successfully made a few cream cheeses, nicely herbed – no photos from that as cream cheese is not particularly photogenic anywhere in the process. The end result is just yum!

I actually had two previous attempts at haloumi but the milk wouldn’t separate even though temperature and other factors were right. Humidity might have been an issue though. The friendly people at Mad Millie suggested to add some calcium chloride, so this time I did. Success!

I used two litres of milk and got almost 250g of haloumi + about a litre of “protein drink” (the whey, it’s quite tasty!)

The milk is warmed to 45’C using the microwave, then a bit of calcium chloride and diluted rennet gets stirred in before putting it in a temperature stable incubator (fancy word for my old big esky) for about half an hour. Then cut in to approx 1cm blocks and leave it for a little longer. Then the photoreportage begins. Mouse-over for some more detail on the pictured steps.

Next cheese type: feta.