Author Topic: Bulk Starter - Making From Manufactured Freeze Dried Direct Vat Innoculation Starter Cultures  (Read 1027 times)

Offline judyp

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Does anyone know if I can make a bulk (mother) culture from MA011 Mesophilic?  Usually those instructions are on the package, but they are not, so I was not sure if that meant I can't use it for that or if the instructions are simply not on the package.

That raises another question, can all starters be turned into a mother culture?  If not, what is the criteria in determining when I can and cannot. 


Offline linuxboy

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Judy, I believe I or Sailor or someone else answered these questions in Sailor's mother culture thread, and in a thread we had with FarmerJD. Worth a read, it's solid info.

But to answer directly:
- Yes, MA11 will make a mother.
- Yes, all starters can be made into mothers, but I think you're thinking about the cheese world in a way where you might want to think about the questions in a different way. Meaning, just how do starters contribute to cheese flavor and milk acidification? They contribute primarily due to the specific enzymes in the cell wall and inside of bacterial cells, and by producing acid. The types of enzymes differ among individual strains as well as among strains. And species have preferences for temp in terms of growth rates. So if you take a starter that has a well-defined ratio and keep propagating it forward, that ratio will most likely change, especially under home conditions. In other words, you can make it into a mother, but future generations will produce a starter that will likely produce cheeses that taste differently.