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Show HN: Tool to calculate how much milk is needed to make an amount of cheese
- huhtenberg 3y agoAdd paneer as an option? Arguably the simplest cheese to make of them all.
- 0xEF 3y agoBrb, about to go make 100kg of Donkey Chedder
- underlines 3y agoSwiss here who worked in the national dairy laboratory before switching into IT. What does this calculator mean by the cheese type "Swiss"?
- mryall 3y agoIn most English-speaking countries, “Swiss” cheese means cheese like Emmenthal - yellow, medium hard, with holes in it. I imagine this is what the calculator means too.
- yetanother-1 3y agoSpeaking of holes, I will leave you with this classic: https://youtu.be/-_KLD9opGFg https://youtu.be/-_KLD9opGFg
- zilti 3y agoSo, the worst Swiss cheese.
- checkyoursudo 3y agoI can find lots of cheeses that are like American "Swiss" cheese here in Germany. I think that what happened was when Swiss immigrants moved to e.g. New Glarus, WI, and started making the cheeses their parents made, and then when people said hey this is good what is it, the Swiss-Americans said it was cheese like they made back in Switzerland, so Swiss cheese. :)
- luxuryballs 3y agowhich one of these is closest to human milk? or maybe you can add that
- globular-toast 3y agoHuman milk is low in protein, high in lactose and has a very low ratio of casein (the curd) to whey. Closest is probably horse (mare), but human is significantly higher in fat so probably tastes better.
- forward1 3y agoFun fact: humans are the only species that drinks milk directly from other species. We're also the only species which drinks milk past infancy. Don't worry, though, it's "normal, natural and necessary".
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThe fact that we tend to lose the ability to digest milk past infancy suggests that this isn't but is rather something that we have relatively recently started to do (perhaps less than 10,000 years ago, apparently and in Europe) and are still adapting to it, which is quite interesting.
- ape4 3y agoIf you don't enter a weight says NaN but that's kind of bread ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- moose44 3y agoAnyone know one for butter?
- hanniabu 3y agoI love simple tools like this. Now all it needs is some cheese recipes.
- saurabhchalke 3y agoThis is the script used for the underlying calculation: // script.js // Yield factors for each cheese type const baseYieldFactors = { "cheddar": 0.10, "mozzarella": 0.20, "parmesan": 0.09, "gouda": 0.12, "brie": 0.15, "camembert": 0.15, "blue cheese": 0.13, "feta": 0.17, "ricotta": 0.20, "monterey jack": 0.10, "swiss": 0.10, "colby": 0.10, "provolone": 0.10, "cottage cheese": 0.18, "cream cheese": 0.20 }; // Milk type factors const milkTypeFactors = { "cow": 1.0, "goat": 0.9, "sheep": 1.1, "buffalo": 1.2, "camel": 0.8, "mare": 0.7, "reindeer": 1.15, "yak": 1.10, "donkey": 0.75 }; // Calculate milk volume based on cheese type, milk type, and desired weight var baseYield = baseYieldFactors[cheeseType]; var milkAdjustment = milkTypeFactors[milkType]; var adjustedYield = baseYield * milkAdjustment; // Calculate milk volume range var minMilkVolume = weight / (adjustedYield * 1.1); var maxMilkVolume = weight / (adjustedYield * 0.9);
- LanzVonL 3y agoI'd like to try it but it's blocked in my region.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt doesn’t contain the calculation for Red Leicester.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoReally, a downvote for this comment? HN really is full of the worst chronically online people imaginable.
- bruce511 3y agoSome years ago, I decided to make cheese as a hobby. Got a starter kit, bought an extra fridge and so on. Turns out making cheese is -really- easy. Milk, rennet, culture, time. Making -specific kind of cheese- though is hard. Recipes are very precise (so you need things like good pH measurers). The biggest problem for me was the waiting time. I'm into software - fix, recompile, run, repeat. Whereas 'leave for 3 months, 6 months, a year, and see if you got it right' was too slow of a feedback loop. These days I only make soft-cheeses, take a week or less, and only in tiny batches (and irregularly). Overall learning the process was fun, and a cool thing to do, but if you want good cheese, well, find a good cheese store :)
- em-bee 3y agoi have been looking into that too and faced the same problem. where i live, cheese shops do not exist. european style cheese has to be imported and is way to expensive. local options are barely useful for pizza. i learned how to make yoghurt (from my chinese wife, surprisingly) and a few times turned milk going bad into a cheese experiment that sometimes worked out. now i am making kefir which turns out to be a lot easier than yoghurt because it works at room temperature, whereas yoghurt needs milk slightly heated.
- mdaniel 3y agoI think this advice is mostly correct based on my experience taking a cheesemaking class last year. They had all kinds of dedicated mini-fridges scattered around their house Having said that, they introduced me to this handy site where they said folks can get any missing equipment and the calcium chloride additive for store milk: https://cheesemaking.com/collections/beginner https://cheesemaking.com/collections/beginner Then, speaking of the raw milk, because I know quite a few folks are in the Bay Area, they said - and I confirmed - they sell raw milk at the Oakland farmer's market on Saturday https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/grand-lake https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/grand-lake Regrettably I don't recall the name of the vendor, and of course have no idea if they're present every Saturday
- samstave 3y agoThere is a vendor in Auburn CA, which is actually a thrift shop for Kids Stuff (its an upscale area - so hand-me-down stuff from higher income, single kids).... However, in the back they have a little shop for Raw Milk Single Cow. So you can subscribe and its super limited quantity, but they provide whole raw milk sourced from a single cow. Super amazing - and the plug that forms on the top is amazing creme. - Another option is to make friends with whomever you can to learn where high-end products are sourced at MIchelin restaurants, I have someone very close to me who was at french laundry for years and their vendors (aside from certain veggies grown in the garden across the street) were from very particular vendors - such as their lamb which comes only from one specific farm. The point being that you should find out who high-end restaurants source from and seek them out directly. (most of the crab sold in San Francisco restaurants was sold by Royal Hawaiian Seafood, but the public could only purchase from them for one hour on a tuesday between 12pm and 1pm - but you get the same live crab that SF charges $65+ for, for $5...) (Find out restaurants of ilk for things you like)
- nomilk 3y agoSimple tools like this are not to be underestimated. This random egg boil time calculator is solely responsible for me having perfectly boiled eggs the past few years: https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/eggs https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/eggs (the main three variables that dramatically alter boil time are soft vs hard boiled, starting temp [e.g. refrigerated vs room temp], and egg weight)
- scottlamb 3y agoNeat, although it's buggy in Fahrenheit. It opens for me in Fahrenheit, maybe based on my browser's locale or geoip. The page opens with initial temperature 4; selecting fridge changes it to 4; selecting room temp changes it to 21. Those numbers make much more sense in Celsius! And indeed if I change the scale to Celsius, it uses those same numbers, now representing very different temperatures. This makes a significant difference: with a US L egg at sea level, soft boil time is 8 minutes 27 seconds from the fridge in Fahrenheit, 6 minutes 58 seconds in Celsius. In my experience, the right answer is 6 minutes even, though opinions about runniness vary... (Sending a note about this to feedback@omnicalculator.com) edit: also, it says US L egg = 60 g? That's not right, unless maybe they're counting the shell, which they shouldn't. 50 g is about right and what cronometer.com says. cronometer also says 56 g = extra large, 63 g = jumbo.
- logifail 3y ago> This random egg boil time calculator ... Good grief. Three PhD authors <sigh> ... when did we all forget the scientific method? "Our" eggs, starting at room temperature, boiled for exactly 3 minutes 30 seconds, gives us the perfect soft-boiled consistency we like. Every time. Why would one need a website to calculate this. Honestly?
- speff 3y agoNot sure if it's just me, but that calculator doesn't seem right given the formula it's supposed to be based off of. Someone else can check my work[0], but the only assumption I made was for K in the calculator (lambda in the linked paper). Since the paper[1] mentioned yolks were 1/3rd of an egg, I used a lambda value of 28.3 The number I got for a 60 gram egg starting at 4.4degC at sea level reaching soft-boiled temps was 5m17s. Compared to the website saying 6m58s. That's a pretty big error somewhere. [0]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%2860grams%29%5E%282%2F3%29%29%2828.33+%28s*grams%5E%28-2%2F3%29%29%29*ln%28.76*%284.44C-100C%29%2F%2865C-100C%29%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%2860grams%29%5E%282... [1]: http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/CW061201-1.pdf http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/CW061201-1.pdf
- WiseWeasel 3y agoVery handy tool! An improvement might be to make milk type the first choice, and limit the cheese options based on milk type selection. Or maybe just combine both into a single selection with milk type option groups.
- eviks 3y agoA simple table with instant calculation defaulting to the output of 1 would be better for the curious
- coldtrait 3y agoIt's missing my milk of choice, pig milk.
- progre 3y agoGood choice if you like intestinal worms
- nathan_douglas 3y agoProvides extra protein; leads to more productive squats.
- qingcharles 3y agoOff-topic, but this is the first .ing site I've seen in the wild...
- DoreenMichele 3y agoDoes anyone know of any online sites with simple recipes or instructions for some basic cheeses? I have heard ricotta can be made by just adding lemon or vinegar to milk. It's basically curds. Ricotta in Germany was completely different from what I have found in the US and I have long wondered if I could make ricotta I would actually eat.
- lagniappe 3y agoI make it all the time. Here's my recipe, it's foolproof. - 1 gallon whole milk, 1 liter heavy cream. - Heat to 180F while stirring - Add half a cup of vinegar and stir thoroughly for a minute or two Then you just wait until it's cooled enough to pick up and pour through some cloth. After that I salt, add garlic, chopped herb, anything will do. One tip I can offer is to jar it up before it gets cold so it is easier to get in the jar without air pockets. Lasts in the fridge for a few weeks, freezes fine.
- woolion 3y agoLook up how to do mozzarella on Youtube (first result is a decent introduction). After you do a batch the milk will still contain a lot of stuff. You can then add 20% of this quantity of milk to that, and re-heat to make ricotta (which literally means re-cooked). (Of course you can make ricotta directly from milk. On the other hand, not adding back some milk makes it difficult to get a good result.) Look up a basic mozzarella making kit if you need the tools, but basically some cheese cloth and a thermometer are the only thing you might not have in a standard kitchen. The most complicated might be to get some real milk (raw) for best results; if you don't, depending on the pasteurization process you might need to fortify the milk with calcium chloride. I've eaten a lot of Italian industrial ricotta and the home-made stuff is just entirely on another level.
- RonnieOwnsLexus 3y agoyou can add 1 more type which is quite popular in Indian Subcontinent. Panner
- runsonrum 3y agoPaneer is brilliant. We usually make a batch if we find some milk on sale. It doesn't matter if the milk is homogenized.
- MandieD 3y agoPaneer would be an excellent one to add because it's easy to make and doesn't even require rennet, just some sort of acid (citric acid carefully added has given me the best results)
- katzenversteher 3y agoWould be nice to adapt it for tofu as well. It's a similar process.
- effnorwood 3y ago[dead]
- mstngl 3y agoI would like to see the calculation for sour milk / Acid-set cheese, especially German variety Harzer. Among countless kinds of cheese, despite strongly polarizing due to its taste and smell, it has some "super food" features: Harzer contains very little fat (less than 1%) but extremely high protein (usually around 30%).
- ggambetta 3y agoSuper useful website! One of my dreams / unrealized projects is to make my own wheel of parmesan. One day... But I take offense at "Swiss cheese"... are we talking Gruyere? Emmental? Appenzeller? Raclette? Tilsiter? Sbrinz? Or one of the many other delicious cheeses we have in Switzerland?
- sb057 3y agoEmmental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_(North_America) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_(North_America)
- ggambetta 3y agoKey word being "resembles" XD
- mattmaroon 3y agoThe stuff with holes in it. That’s as much as we Americans know.
- azepoi 3y agoMost hard pressed cheeses (think comté, beaufort, gruyère, gouda) are around 10L/kg, Parmigiano reggiano is more like 15L/kg, so I think the app underestimate it, unless by Parmesan you mean not the real deal Obviously dryer cheeses are more dense and require more milk per kg as they age The cheese choice is severly lacking :) The milk type choice is nice, as Cow's milk contains more water compared to goat or sheep's
- zilti 3y agoI doubt anything there is "the real deal", "Swiss" isn't a kind of cheese either
- stevage 3y agoPro tip for anyone ever making an app like this. Ditch the calculate button, and update the calculation everytime any input changes.