Making cheese 2016 into 2017

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Chief Longwind Of The North said:
Since you make Ghouda, let me tell you about a cheese I just tried - Ghouda aged 1000 days. The cheese is sublime. It has a full-bodied mature flavor, similar in flavor and texture to a 3 year aged small farm cheddar, but just different enough to tell it's not cheddar. It's really had to describe the difference in flavor, bit there is a difference. I'm a fan.

Just sharing.:yum:

Seeeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
Click to expand...

Chief, this is the hardest part of cheese making, aging it. Imagine if you made some cheese for the first time or the tenth time, in 2014. You had no idea if you were actually doing it very well or not. You wanted to wait until the cheese was 1000 days old, so you did. Even if you are successful you have no gratification for those 1000 days and the day you cut it open you might find a number of possible things. You might see the cheese expand when it's not supposed to, leading you to realize your milk was sub par or contaminated. You might find mold under the wax and mold has a tendency of changing the flavor of the cheese and continuing to grow into the cheese. You might find that the acid continued to grow unchecked (not enough salt to retard it) and you have acid whey that eats away at the cheese and instead of a soft or hard cheese, you've got a flaky acid mess. It's not like cooking/baking, at least with regular cooking/baking, you get some immediate gratification.

That gouda, sounds heavenly! So far, you've brought up the aged colby and now the aged gouda, that is gouda stuff to know! Thank you for your comments and sharing!

Okay, that deserves more pictures....so....
This is the beginning of blue cheese, just a 2 gallon batch, so around 2 lbs, holes poked in the top bottom and sides to grow the mold, it gets turned daily for the first week, ages for 30-40 days to full maturity. If I had known blue cheese was so short aged and easy to make, I wouldn't have spent money on buying it at its exorbitant prices.
wbluecheesebluing.jpg


This picture shows an emmentaler on the top, and two jarlsbergs a week apart, this is after being in the cheese cave and waxed, then it sits at room temperature while it expands for hole formation. The back one is expanding and the front one is just beginning to expand. Then they get waxed again and put back in the cheese cave, or shredded and frozen, or just foodSaver and frozen, for FONDUE, yum yum yum. I usually make fondue with 3 types of swiss cheese and easily spend $75 a year buying these for near Christmas. What will it be like to never buy cheese? This is not my mother's kitchen.:LOL:
wjarlsbergburstingout.jpg
 
blissful said:
Chief, this is the hardest part of cheese making, aging it. Imagine if you made some cheese for the first time or the tenth time, in 2014. You had no idea if you were actually doing it very well or not. You wanted to wait until the cheese was 1000 days old, so you did. Even if you are successful you have no gratification for those 1000 days and the day you cut it open you might find a number of possible things. You might see the cheese expand when it's not supposed to, leading you to realize your milk was sub par or contaminated. You might find mold under the wax and mold has a tendency of changing the flavor of the cheese and continuing to grow into the cheese. You might find that the acid continued to grow unchecked (not enough salt to retard it) and you have acid whey that eats away at the cheese and instead of a soft or hard cheese, you've got a flaky acid mess. It's not like cooking/baking, at least with regular cooking/baking, you get some immediate gratification.
Click to expand...

Both my exuberance and ignorance show here. Yes, I should have known that there are critical parts of the recipe that would affect the final stages of an aged cheese, and why some 5 year cheeses as far superior to others. You know far more about cheese making than I do. I have always been that guy who jumps in with both feet, often before I have enough knowledge about what I'm jumping into. Sometimes you find a beautiful swimming hole, and sometimes you find a lot of shallow rocks. Both ways, you learn something. But it's far better to test the waters, and ask trusted resources so that you can avoid jumping into the rocks.

Your cheeses sound delightful, and I still am envious. But I still have my own successful experiments as well. They just don't need to be aged.

Keep us updated.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
Blissful,

Extraordinarily amazing labors.

Cheese has always been an integral part of the Mediterranean legacy, henceforth,
during the Christmas Season, time permitting, I have made homemade Ricotta.

Thank you for posting.
 
I made another mottled colby4, and it had too much whey left in it and I struggled with pressing it for a long time. Then once I took the behemoth out of the mold/press, it was at least 1/3 bigger than it should have been. It drained on a mat and there was whey everywhere the next morning and I finally moved it to a mat on a towel. It's finally looking almost normal and drying a bit but it developed a crack in the side which I suppose I'll wax over once it is dry enough. Stuff happens and I need to roll with it.

I made cheddar5 today and probably cheddar6 tomorrow. The goudas are waxed and in the cheese cave and I plan to wax the gruyeres next.
 
Bliss, you should move to Nazareth, Pennsylvania and open a cheese shop.

You could call it Cheeses of Nazareth...
 
Bucky, I'm thinking of staying here and calling them the Cheese's of Mom, because I'm a mom that has no idea what she is doing except these good tasting cheese keep showing up. We ate the colby4, that was much too wet, and without aging, it is delicious. We couldn't believe it. It was our best cheese so far.

Today I made a 7 layer salad and I'm making 7 qts of baked beans, I put off the cheddar6 until tomorrow. My blue cheese looks deep dark blue. I really enjoy the cheese making, it might take all day but it will give us lots of good nutrition and taste great.
 
That's okay, you can be my cheesy friend, It's fun and I have cheesy friends.
 
Okay I made the cheddar 5 but not the cheddar6 yet, Cheddar 5 is rock solid, hard pressed and for long aging. I'm making the parmesan5 today, because we have 2% milk today. This also needs to be rock solid, hard pressed, little moisture for long aging.

While I'm doing this I'm making a texas super spicy not terribly hot, chili. I have a colby and a cheddar to wax today. I took the red wax off the jarlsbergs that were exploding and cleaned the wax with soap and water, then dried them, then put that wax back in the dedicated red wax pan, to wax the next cheese. I vacpacked the emmentaler2 and the two jarlsbergs, all of them exploding a bit with hole development, after I washed all the room temperature cheeses in an 18% brine solution. I made 2 more quarts of brine solution, to have on hand for brining and washing the cheeses. (two qts of boiling water, 1 t calcium chloride, 2 T of vinegar and 1 lb of non-iodized salt) The three swisses went into the freezer portion of the cheese cave, only about 54 degrees F, just a hair cooler than the refrigerator portion of the cheese cave. I still need another shelf in the refrigerator portion and DH is working on it (thinking on it).

By the end of the day, all the cheeses except today's parmesan will be either vacpacked, waxed, in the cheese cave or vacpacked in the refrigerator and freezer for eating, that will be a relief. Having 5 or 6 cheeses 'in process' in the kitchen is kind of distracting from cooking and gardening.
 
Since the last time, I made a parmesan6 and parmesan7. Today, I made a 2 gallon batch of cottage cheese. Wow that cottage cheese is heavenly. I like cottage cheese but this stuff was heavenly.
I'm putting my cheese making stuff in boxes and finding a place to keep it clean while I'm not using it.
I'll be back when I do a taste testing in the coming months. I hope to see you all joining in when you have time, and milk.
 
This is the quarter of the blue cheese we are now eating, once I peeled back the outer mold. It is mild and delicious. The rest is vac packed and in the cheese cave aging.

wquarterblue.jpg


This is the cheddar2 cut in half. The wax was leaking but not much, so I wanted to have a good look at it and make sure no mold was growing, it wasn't. So nice to see. It still has a month (or a year) to age. The little I tasted was a very mild cheddar, nice.

wcheddar2half.jpg


This is jarlsberg1 and I was thrilled with the texture and its mild taste. Those two halves weigh about 4 lbs. We took 1/4 of it and we are eating it and the rest repackaged and put back in the cheese cave.

wjarlsberg1half.jpg


There's a slice, isn't that nice.

wjarlsberg1slice.jpg
 
I miss making cheese most days but I think we have enough for most of a year now. Thank you for the kind words, thank you, thank you thank you.

I finally got up the nerve to write to this youtube cheese making guy in australia, Gavin Webber, sent pictures and descriptions of the cheeses, as he has been the inspiration for something I've always wanted to do, but never had the nerve to do. He wrote me back, a kind kind reply, what a great inspiration. He's an excellent teacher.
 
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