Making Cheese

[spalari]

Now for all the information I have been able to gather, no one really knows how we make cheese in Salem.
It's obviously something we do with milk, so we can't do it on the province server yet.
Either way I'm making this post to help speculation, since I don't play on the Popham server I'd like to see how far people have gotten, or at least help people try new things.

Now first if we analyse the Cheese Making skill text :

Cheese. Noblest of all dairy products. Cheese making takes equal parts preparation, hard work, and patience. From the simplest of curd to the most complex aged wheel, Cheese Making allows pilgrims to explore the world of coagulated milk fats!

The in-game flavour text does hint at us that it has something to do with a aging process ;


Cheese. Noblest of all dairy products. Cheese making takes equal parts preparation, hard work, and patience. From the simplest of curd to the most complex aged wheel, Cheese Making allows pilgrims to explore the world of coagulated milk fats!

as you can see from the highlighted phrases: patience, aged, and coagulation; are all references to having to wait, or at least references to some sort of aging process, whether it is like the Ambergris mechanic, as in if we age the cheese longer it'll be more potent.

Now I assume you don't just leave milk in a bucket, and let it rot; that'd be too easy

other reasonable ways to make milk would include boiling it, but I doubt this would work since it was Louis Pasteur who figured we should start boiling our diary products, or pasteurize them. And Louis Pasteur lived between the 1800-1900, and Salem should be in the early 1700's (I think, please do correct me if I'm wrong)

Where I am from we have traditions that are over a thousand years old, where we let our diary products rot to turn it into cheese.
Instead of letting it rot on its own and becoming some weird disgusting mush (which we eat too) you can use fruit juices (which contain enzymes) which start a process which coagulates the substance and makes it the cheese we all know and love, so my theory is that cheese making has something to do with fruit juice, or atleast the fruits themselves, since they are one of the only proper form of enzymes we can actually get in the game.

Now this is just my main theory, if this doesn't work people could try and experiment with using;

Stringy Sinew In real life these work with a lot of enzymes in your body, but I'm not actualy sure you could use Sinews for this process, but I'm adding it to the list none the less.

Honey honey contains natural enzymes so I guess this could work? never heard of honey cheese though but I'm sure it exists.

I'll add more to this list if I come to think of anything, something that people should know though is that the coagulation process of cheese is acid based though, so if you can't think of anything rich in sweetness and enzymes that is in the game you could try using it.

Feel free to bash me for recommending things that you've already tried, I just want to shed light on this cheese making thing.

[saltmummy]

I don't think it's even implemented yet. Cheese is usually made with rennet. The "traditional" method of producing rennet was to dry out and slice a calf gut and place it into salt water, mixed with vinegar. Leave that out for a day or two and then the whole thing is filtered to obtain the "crude" rennet, which can curdle milk at a ratio of (according to wikipedia) 1 gram of rennet per 2-4 liters of milk.

Soft cheeses can be produced without rennet by using vinegar or citric acids. I think way way back they just stashed the milk in a sealed stomach and let it ferment.

Feel free to bash me for recommending things that you've already tried, I just want to shed light on this cheese making thing.

No need to bash, cheese is one of those things where everything is in place except the product itself. Perhaps this belongs in ideas and innovations instead though?

[spalari]

I don't think it's even implemented yet. Cheese is usually made with rennet. The "traditional" method of producing rennet was to dry out and slice a calf gut and place it into salt water, mixed with vinegar. Leave that out for a day or two and then the whole thing is filtered to obtain the "crude" rennet, which can curdle milk at a ratio of (according to wikipedia) 1 gram of rennet per 2-4 liters of milk.

Soft cheeses can be produced without rennet by using vinegar or citric acids. I think way way back they just stashed the milk in a sealed stomach and let it ferment.

Feel free to bash me for recommending things that you've already tried, I just want to shed light on this cheese making thing.

No need to bash, cheese is one of those things where everything is in place except the product itself. Perhaps this belongs in ideas and innovations instead though?

The Egyptians made cheese too there is no single traditional way of making cheese, that might have been how some people did it

And the reason I posted it in "Help!" was because ;

"Help!
Ask and answer any and all questions pertaining to Salem's game-play. "

I'm not trying to come up with suggestions for how its made, for all I know its already in the game and no one knows how to make it yet (on the popham server that is).
I was just trying to "Help!"

[Nikixos]

Now I assume you don't just leave milk in a bucket, and let it rot; that'd be too easy.

Why not? That is what happens to the glasses of milk i leave at my room for days or even weeks