Making Your Own Cheese from Goat's Milk

Why Goat's Milk Is the Perfect Starting Point

If you keep a couple of goats on a smallholding, you will soon discover that there is only so much milk you can drink, freeze or turn into yoghurt. Cheese is the natural answer, and goat's milk is wonderfully forgiving for a beginner. It is naturally homogenised, meaning the cream does not rise to the top, so you get a consistent curd without fussing over separation. The fat globules are also smaller than those in cow's milk, which gives a finer, more delicate curd and a cheese that sets reliably at room temperature.

Best of all, the simplest goat's cheese is a lactic-set cheese — one that relies on a starter culture rather than a heavy dose of rennet. There is no pressing, no waxing, no cheese cave. A pan, a thermometer, a square of muslin and a night's patience will take you from milk to a fresh, lemony cheese that knocks spots off anything plastic-wrapped in a supermarket chiller.

The Kit You Will Need

Gather everything before you start, and sterilise it all thoroughly with boiling water. Cheesemaking is really a study in cleanliness: unwanted bacteria will give you a bitter, yeasty or simply unpleasant result.

• A large stainless steel pan — 5 litres or more, with a heavy base.
• A dairy thermometer, accurate to within a degree or two.
• A slotted spoon or ladle.
• A colander, plus a large square of butter muslin (not the loose-weave stuff used for jams).
• Kitchen string, and a bowl deep enough for the muslin bag to hang into without touching the bottom.
• Cheese moulds or small baskets if you want neat little rounds, though a log shape needs nothing more than greaseproof paper and clean hands.
• A mesophilic starter culture, or a couple of tablespoons of live natural yoghurt as a standby.
• Liquid rennet — a few drops go a very long way.

Choosing and Handling the Milk

Four litres of fresh goat's milk makes roughly 600–700g of soft cheese, so scale up or down as your goat allows. Use the milk as fresh as you can — ideally within 24 hours of milking — and keep it chilled until the moment you begin. Pasteurised milk works perfectly well; raw milk gives a fuller, more complex flavour but demands scrupulous hygiene and a healthy, well-tested animal.

Peak District keepers will tell you the milk changes with the season. Spring milk, when the goats are first out on new grass, tends to be lighter and sweeter. By late summer, once they have been browsing hedgerow herbs, the milk is richer and the cheese noticeably more savoury. Do not fight this — note what you did and when, and you will learn your own herd's rhythm.

Making the Cheese, Step by Step

Warm the milk gently to around 20–22°C. This is a lactic set, so you want it lukewarm rather than hot. Stir in your starter, cover the pan and leave it for half an hour to wake up.

Next, dilute two to four drops of rennet in a tablespoon of cooled, boiled water and stir it through the milk for a full minute. Cover the pan again and leave it somewhere draught-free at room temperature.

Now comes the hard part: waiting. Over the next 12 to 24 hours the milk will thicken into a soft, glossy curd that looks rather like set yoghurt and pulls cleanly away from the side of the pan when you tilt it. Cooler weather slows this down, so a Peak District kitchen in February may take the full day, while a warm September airing cupboard could be done overnight.

When the curd is set, ladle it gently into the muslin-lined colander. Do not stir or break it up more than you must. Gather the corners of the cloth, tie them firmly, and hang the bundle over a bowl to drain. Twelve hours gives you a soft, spoonable cheese; twenty-four gives you something firm enough to slice.

Salting, Shaping and Flavouring

Tip the drained curd into a bowl and work in fine sea salt — about a teaspoon per 500g. Salt is not just for flavour; it helps draw out the last of the whey and preserves the cheese. Mix it through with clean hands until the texture is smooth and slightly springy.

This is where a smallholding kitchen comes into its own. Try any of the following:

• Chopped chives and cracked black pepper, rolled into a log.
• Fresh thyme and a little grated lemon zest.
• Wild garlic, finely shredded, for a few weeks in spring.
• Toasted crushed hazelnuts pressed onto the outside.
• Nothing at all — good goat's cheese needs no apology.

Shape the cheese into logs, rounds or little pyramids, then wrap in greaseproof paper and keep it cool.

Storing, Serving and Troubleshooting

Fresh goat's cheese keeps for one to two weeks in the fridge, and freezes surprisingly well for up to three months. Bring it to room temperature before eating and let it stand for ten minutes — the flavour opens up enormously. Serve with oatcakes, beetroot, a drizzle of honey, or simply on good bread.

If your curd refuses to set, suspect milk that was too cool, tired rennet or an old starter. If the finished cheese is too dry, you have hung it too long; too wet, and it needed another few hours. Both are entirely recoverable — stir a little cream into a dry cheese, or hang a wet one a while longer.

Above all, keep notes. Cheesemaking rewards the patient keeper more than the clever one, and every batch from your own goats will teach you something the recipe books cannot.