Cheese Lab Conclusion

Cheese Lab Conclusion

In our lab, we asked the question: What are the optimal conditions and curdling agents for making cheese? Our hypothesis was that if rennin is an enzyme from a calf stomach that digest caesin and make curds faster, the the optimal condition will be normal. We found out that warm conditions and a acidic curdling agent was useful to make cheese. Chymosin, Rennin, and Buttermilk worked best with an acidic curdling agent. It only took about 5 minutes to create curds. For the base curdling agent, It took Chymosin 20 minutes to create curds and for Rennin and Buttermilk, there was no curds in the amount of time given to us. For the pH control, Chymosin and Rennin took 15 minutes and 10 minutes. None of the curdling agents did well in the cold, but was effective in the warm temperature as it took Chymosin and Rennin 5 minutes. For the temperature control, Chymosin and Rennin took 10 minutes. This shows that Chymosin is more effective at making curds than rennin and buttermilk is the least effective. This is because of the optimal condition. Chymosin was more effective under warm conditions than Rennin and Buttermilk. It was better for the acid, and base.

While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there could have been errors due to the timing of our lab. We had continued to run the timer while we were timing the curdling of the acid, base and control. We never stopped the timer and as a result, our times may have been off by a few seconds. Another error that happened in our lab was the amount of clothes people wore. One person in our group was wearing a jacket and two people wore a t-shirt. The person wearing the jacket probably got faster results than usual people testing for the base, acid and control than the people wearing a t-shirt because a jacket is thicker than a t-shirt. In order for the results to become more accurate, we should stop the timer at a certain point and check and then keep the timer going once everyone has their test tubes on their armpits. Also, people should all wear the same type of clothing and people that have not been sweating recently from physical activity.

The purpose of this lab was to know the best curdling agent to create cheese curds from milk. We learned about the 4 curdling agents, milk, cultures of bacteria, Rennin, and Chymosin. We learned about how cheese is made and what is required to make good, and fresh cheese. We also learned about where the curdling agents come from and how it’s used. This lab was related to what we learned about proteins and enzyme structure. We learned about the 4 structures of enzymes, primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary. We learned about the factors that affect enzymes which is pH and temperature. This lab can be applied to other situations involving a fast, and effective way to make cheese and to get the right ingredients to make cheese that will make a person’s mouth water.

	Time to Curdle (minutes)
Curdling Agent	Chymosin	Rennin	Buttermilk	milk (control)
Acid	5	5	5
Base	20
pH control	15	10
Cold
Hot	5	5
Temp control	10	10