The Cheese Thread

[New_guy]

Going into the colder months now means it's - CHEESE SEASON* AGAIN! I've got three long-term cheeses on the go at the moment, in various states of maturity:

- A Caerphilly, which I'm probably going to eat fairly soon - it can be aged for months but it's the sort of cheese that will be ready after a few weeks.
- A traditional Cheddar, which I kind of mucked up during the press - it's always hard getting the curds to knit together so it has a lumpy texture, which is going to make it difficult to wax, when I get around to it.
- A Double Gloucester cheese, still in the press, which apparently I've got to age one to three months. By the looks of it, it'll be a moister, sweeter cheese than cheddar (made in a similar way, but with a much shorter period of ageing/treating the curds).

And more to come.... oh, MUCH MUCH MORE TO COME.

Love to hear what other cheeses folks are making!

*Cheese + Season = Cheason?

Mate - you need to give the Merri Mashers the low down on cheese
Would be rapt to make my own cloth bound cheddar to have with my pickled onions and IPA!!!

 

[benno1973]

Man, I need to get back into making cheese. It's been at least 6 months since my last one, but you've inspired me Tim!

 

[OzPaleAle]

Man, I need to get back into making cheese. It's been at least 6 months since my last one, but you've inspired me Tim!

Thinking the same thing, cruising around tassie at the moment consuming much cheese, giving me the itch.

 

[cooraf]

this is my latest cheese i've made (asiago) it's only just been waxed will be ready to eat in 2 months.

i've also made cotwold, cearphilly, haloumi, feta, i have a Jalapeno & Garlic, Tomme and Asiago in the fridge aging.

i've been keeping a blog of all my cheese and beer making: http://dnabrew.blogspot.com.au/

Dave

 

[TimT]

Nice. I love the pattern the cloth and the moulds make on the skin of the cheese.

I am slowly working my way through the British Isles in cheese. In addition to my Cheddars, Caerphillies and Gloucesters I now have on my board a Cheshire and a Wensleydale. While lacking the super-salty or spicy kick of some of the continental cheeses, these UK cheeses are real stayers - lovely mild flavours, sour-sweet and bitter and nutty, and pleasant crumbly or smooth textures. I want to age some of them for as long as possible before eating. If anyone cares to suggest another obscure UK cheese for me to try I'd be eager to give it a go. I've got plans for a Cornish Yarg, for instance....

(Full disclosure - I ate the Caerphilly a while ago but it's easy to make and not meant to be aged for long anyway).

 

[OzPaleAle]

Looks tasty, I have just done 2 x ~1kg parmesans & a swiss, found a wooden skewer and food colouring was a good way to write the date I made them on the cheese, had to be after it was a bit dryer so a couple of days after being out of the brine or the colour runs a fair bit.
Managed to score about 16L of various milks on clearance from supermarket for about $4, not amazing milk or anything but for $4 I took a punt, ended up making about a 1.5kg Parmesan as most of them were lower fat milks so not too bad.

 

[pk.sax]

My first cheese making effort: paneer & whey waiting to be converted into ricotta tonight.

 

[TimT]

Er, how did you make the paneer? Usually, I believe paneer is made from milk heated and given a few squeezes of lemon juice to separate the curds and whey.... when you do this you normally can't reheat the leftover whey to make ricotta. The milk's already yielded as much curds as it's ever going to and adding more lemon juice/vinegar is going to make it more acidic without giving you any more goodness.

Sorry to be a tiresome negative nelly....

 

[pk.sax]

Well, I did exactly what you said.

Then, they whey looked more like lite milk than whey, so..... I put in a drop of rennet and a little runny water off the top of a jar of yoghurt. Left it in a tub, quite warm - 30-50C?!

Anyway, fast forward a couple if hours and the curds have separated from the whey, I cut it and left it alone again. Come back later and drained it all through cheesecloth and put a little salt on it (and pepper just for fun). So, currently I've got some extra soft white cheese from what I was gonna throw away. Is it ricotta? Dunno, prolly not. Tastes good though.

 

[pk.sax]

Possibly didn't acidify the milk enough first go? Milk was borderline expired, not fresh enough... Dunno. Made 2 lots of cheese. Still gotta get into proper cheesemaking, today was a dry run handling equipment, quite happy to have something for the effort

 

[TimT]

Hey you got results, so good for you!

Sounds like you didn't acidify the milk enough first go, as you suggest. Usual instructions are 'if the milk hasn't clearly separated into curds and whey after a few minutes add some more lemon juice (or vinegar or whatever acid you're using)'. Either that - or didn't heat up to around 95 degrees C as is common for paneer/ricotta, etc?

 

[TimT]

I had a shocker the other day trying to make haloumi with nettle rennet.... no matter how much nettle rennet I added it didn't work*. So then I tried heating up to make ricotta.... I'd obviously somehow stuffed up the milk though, because I kept adding more vinegar and didn't get much separation of curds and whey at all.

In the end I strained it out and got a lump of horrible, salty, grey-looking curds. I put them in my fridge and ignored them for a week hoping they'd go away before throwing them out....

*Thanks to the brilliant researchers on this very site, later I worked out my problem was probably that the way I'd tried to make nettle rennet destroyed the active enzyme.

 

[OzPaleAle]

Made a creamy blue today, used a starter collected from a raw milk Roquefort from a cheese shop, separated the 2 cultures on agar plates and used them to inoculate a starter, not sure about dosing rates doing it that way however.
hate paying $30 odd for the 8L of unhomogenised milk though, gotta get around to finding an alternative source, makes a big difference from the homogenised milk though. Just have to wait a few months to find out the result.

 

[OzPaleAle]

Some of the cheeses I have on the go at the moment, Left is a 2 day old blue, front is a 2 month old swiss, the other 2 are 2 month old parmesans.

 

[wobbly]

Can you use Star San to sanitise your cheese making equipment or is it necessary to soak everything in Milton?

I have been told to be careful not to use any sanitiser that contains both Sodium Hypochlorite and sodium Hydroxide (which according to the label Star San doesn't)

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[TimT]

Apparently some cheesemakers do use Starsan. Mostly I just boil what I want to sanitise.

 

[AndrewQLD]

An acid based sanitizer is fine for cheesemaking,

 

[TimT]

I've read some cheesemakers just use vinegar.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Proxitane is used in the dairy industry would imagine would be fine for cheese, not made any yet but hopefully will get around to it.

 

[seehuusen]

What a fantastic thread!

I bought the missus some cheese making gear, and she wants to make cams and hard cheese.
I'll see what she thinks about perhaps making your Blue cheese Andrew, looks SUPER yummy (I love soft blue cheese)