Hello!
In big cheese-making plants, it is a little different, but here on the farm, we make cheese quite close to how it was made for hundreds of years (except for a little more stainless steel).

Then Jesse adds a freeze-dried starter culture (bacteria) to begin to lower the pH, (raise the acidity). Also, an enzyme called rennet (microbial), is added to make it set up like gelatin. This takes about an hour.

Next, Jesse cuts the "curd" with wire harps. This makes lots of little cubes, with lots of surface area, so the whey can come out from the curds. Heating the mixture drives out more whey, and replacing the whey with water keeps the pH from dropping too far.

When the curd is firm, Jesse loads it into the moulds, about 30 of them, and presses them under some horizontal bars sticking out of the wall. This makes them stick together and drives out more whey yet. They perform remarkably well under pressure (up to ten times their own weight); but he has to bring it on gradually. "We can't do anything that might upset those precious bacteria that are working so hard for us in there!" (they determine the specific taste of the cheese in the end).

After 5 hours of this treatment, they are left overnight to make them beautiful and round.The next morning, Jesse puts the cheese rounds into a 20% salt solution (the Dead Sea in Israel is 7%, and it's dead) to cure the outside and dry it out, forming an all-natural rind that protects the cheese. It also puts the nice salty taste into the cheese and slows down the bacteria, so it (the bacteria) doesn't quickly rot the cheese. The pH is also quite low in the brine tank, because of the whey that keeps coming out of the cheese into the brine (where salt goes, water follows, remember?). The brine also helps to seal the outside of the cheese. After three days in the brine, it's all up to the ripening room.