Goat Cheese Round One (part 1)

Right now, my first-ever attempt at home made goat cheese is chilling in the fridge. I'm really excited to try it, and I really hope it turns out well. The process was really simple, and there are literally two ingredients (so far). I'm also interested in the cost-effectiveness of this endeavor, although so far I don't think the volume is great enough to actually do better than break even, but I won't know for sure until it's all done. This is how part 1 went down.

Materials:
1.5 quarts of goat milk ($5.25)
1 lemon ($0.50)
Large bowl
Colander
Cheesecloth
Meat thermometer
three binder clips
wooden spoon

Step 1 - Heat the Milk.
Put milk in a saucepan and on medium heat until it's between 170 and 185 degrees; stir just often enough to not allow a skin to form.
Have a meat thermometer (or other cooking thermometer) ready to take readings. (Be careful not to allow the bottom of the thermometer to rest on the bottom of the pan, this will change the result).
When it gets to that temperature, take it off the heat.

Step 2 - Add Lemon Juice
Add 1 Tbsp of lemon juice to the milk and stir. Let sit until the temperature comes down to below 130 degrees (about 10 minutes)

Step 3 - Drain
While the milk was getting warm, you should have lined the colander with several sheets of cheesecloth and placed it inside the large bowl. I use the binder clips to secure the cloth to the colander to make sure it doesn't slip when I add the curds.
Ladle the nicely curdled <130ish degree milk into the colander, allowing the why to drain.
Gather the edges of the cloth and tie tightly. This is where several recipes diverged: some said to tie the curd bundle to a wooden spoon and let the whey drip away, others said to place a plate on top and weight it down in order to drain. *Because I like the denser goat cheeses, and my amature guess is that the pressing out of the whey results in more whey getting out, thereby creating denser cheese. I have no idea if this is true though, but we'll see.  

Ingredients: goat's milk, lemon juice, heat.

Partially curdled.

Total scale of the operation.

That's where we are right now.... Updates to follow.