Cheese Yield Calculator

Because yield tracks how much moisture the cheese keeps, not how much milk went in. Brie is never pressed and its rind-ripening process keeps most of the curd's original moisture inside, while parmesan is pressed hard and aged for months specifically to drive moisture out for a dense, shelf-stable texture. The parmesan you eat is a much more concentrated, drier product per pound than the brie, so it takes more milk to make each pound of it.

Yes, though modestly compared to the effect of cheese style. During coagulation, fat globules get trapped in the curd along with the casein protein, so a richer milk (more fat) ends up contributing more solid mass to the finished cheese rather than draining away in the whey. Going from skim milk (near 0% fat) to a rich Jersey-cow milk (around 5-6% fat) can meaningfully raise yield, but the swing is much smaller than the difference between cheese styles.

This calculator's ricotta figure assumes whole-milk ricotta, made by acid- coagulating the entire batch of milk rather than pressing rennet-set curds and draining away most of the whey. Because almost none of the milk's water and dissolved solids are removed, whole-milk ricotta retains far more mass per gallon than a pressed, drained cheese like cheddar -- it's closer to "coagulated milk" than to a traditional aged cheese.

Milk cost here is a simple function of how much milk you buy -- gallons times a flat per-gallon price -- so it doesn't move when you change what you're making from that milk. What DOES change with cheese style is Cost per Pound, since a style that yields less cheese per gallon (like parmesan) spreads the same milk cost over fewer finished pounds, raising the cost per pound even though the milk bill itself is unchanged.