A first feta in a jar of brine: too much salt, then too little
Feta looked like the obvious next step after paneer and ricotta: a proper cultured, renneted cheese, but one eaten young, so no rind and no long wait to find out whether it worked. It took three tries across December and January, and all three problems were in the brine.
The make itself was consistent. Four litres of whole milk warmed to 30 °C, a pinch of mesophilic culture, an hour to ripen, calcium chloride and then rennet, and a slow set of about an hour until the curd gave a clean break. The curd was cut to about 2 cm, left to rest for ten minutes, then ladled into a cloth-lined colander and hung from the tap for four hours, turned once. The result each time was a block of about 550 g, soft but sliceable, pleasantly sour. The trouble started when the blocks went into their jars.
First try: I made a 12 per cent brine, about 120 g of salt in a litre of water, because a stronger brine seemed safer. After five days the outside of the cheese had gone slick and slimy and the brine had turned cloudy. I understand now that a strong brine pulls calcium out of the curd faster than the acidity can hold it, and the surface simply dissolves. It tasted fine inside, but the outside was unpleasant and I threw a third of it away.
Second try: I overcorrected to about 4 per cent. After a week the blocks had softened to something close to a thick yoghurt and had very little flavour. The salt was not enough to firm the cheese or to stop it continuing to acidify, and it went mushy and sour.
Third try: 8 per cent brine, made with boiled and cooled water, with a quarter teaspoon of calcium chloride and a splash of whey from the make to bring the acidity closer to the cheese. After ten days the blocks were firm, crumbly at the edge, clean-tasting and properly salty. That is the recipe written on the jar now. The cheese kept well in the fridge for five weeks in that brine, getting slowly saltier, and the last of it went into a spinach pie.