Cheese Lab

	Time to Curdle
Curdling agent	Chymosin	Rennin	Buttermilk	Milk (control)
Acid	5	5	20
Base	15	10
Cold
Hot	20	33
Average of Controls	13	15

Conclusion

In this lab we asked the question, what are the optimal conditions and curdling agents for making cheese. From this lab we found that a curdling agent of acid and added rennin and chymosin would be the best for making cheese. This was the best because it got a time of only 5 minutes while the base got 10 and 15, and hot got 20 and 33. The added buttermilk only worked for the acid, but the time was  And this is a quantitative type of observation.This data does and does not support our claim because we said that added chymosin which is a rennin enzyme would curdle the milk the best and it did. But we also said that the temperature for making it curdle would be hot but acid worked the best.

Our data was unexpected because almost all of the other groups curdling agents got a time but ours got n/a. Due to this we might have had a error with the amount of buttermilk we added. This might have happened because it was really hard to measure a small amount of something that was really thick. So we might not have had the right amount of buttermilk in our test tubes. This probably affected that it didn't curdle cause we had too little. Another error that we had was the temperature of the hot test tube. The test tube that was supposed to be hot, but it didn't become as hot as we expected. This happened because the hot water bath was room temperature and not hot. It affected the milk so it didn't have enough heat to curdle. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend that we would have had a better way to measure the buttermilk, and spend more time to get the amount correct. And for the second error, instead of leaving the test tube in the hot water we could have put the test tube in someone's hand or between arm and body.

This lab was done to demonstrate what agents are the best to curdle milk. From this lab I learned that Acid with added rennin and chymosin was the best to curdle milk, and how the enzymes help curdle the milk which helps me understand the concept of making cheese, and how enzymes and bacteria are important in the making of many foods. Based on my experience from this lab i could learn how bacteria works and also enzymes and how a small difference between temperature or measurement can change something dramatically.