Cheese Lab Conclusion

In this lab we asked the question what are the optimal conditions and curdling agents for making cheese. We found that chymosin is the best agent and is optimal in a hot and acidic environment. Chymosin curdled 5 minutes faster than rennin in a pH controlled environment and curdled in 20 minutes in a base environment while rennin didn’t curdle at all. Chymosin makes products very quickly, making it the most efficient curdling agent for making cheese. Chymosin is made from rennin and rennin is extracted from calf stomachs where conditions are very hot and highly acidic. This is why chymosin is optimal in warm acidic conditions and supports our claim that chymosin is the best agent in a hot and acidic environment.

Our data contradicts the expected results because of the uneven timing of heating and checking our test tubes. A possible error was when we took the test tubes out of our armpits to check for curdling every 5 minutes. The curdling may have occurred in 3 minutes but we didn’t know because we only checked after 5 minutes of being in our armpits. This affected our results and made them inaccurate because our data states that chymosin, rennin, and buttermilk all took 5 minutes to curdle in an acidic environment, however, chymosin might have curdled faster than rennin and buttermilk but we don’t know for sure because we only checked 5 minutes into the curdling process. To improve this lab you could check the test tube every minute instead of every 5 minutes to find more accurate results about the exact time the curdling occurred. Another possible error is that people have varying body temperatures and when putting the test tube in your armpit, everyone is putting their test tubes in different temperatures. Not only are body temperatures of everyone different, but depending on how many layers of clothing everyone had one, the temperatures varied. This affected the results because one of the constants of the experiment was the temperature the test tubes were in and with that constant becoming a variable, the results become inaccurate. In the future of this experiment the biologists should immerge all the test tubes in a pot of hot water or a different heating source where they all the test tubes are heated at the same temperature.

This lab was done to demonstrate what the optimal conditions and curdling are for making cheese. From this lab I learned that curdling occurs in very warm and acidic environments which helps me understand the concept of activation energy and finding the right conditions for activation energy to cause enzymes to begin making products. Based on my experience with this lab if I am ever baking and the recipe calls for buttermilk I can just add lemon juice to regular milk and I will have buttermilk. The acidic lemon juice makes bacteria appear and enzymes form and begin to make chemical reactions, giving it a sour taste.

Time in minutes
Curdling Agent:	chymosin	rennin	buttermilk	mik (control)
Acid	5	5	5
Base	20
pH control	15	10
Cold
Hot	5	5
Average	10	10