I started making cheeses a few weeks ago, using the milk from our beloved Jersey house cow, now that the animals are weaned. For me, it’s all about the cow first.
I had success with lovely creamy feta, then tried Camembert, not as nice as the bought stuff, but I just grate it for cooking.
Now I am into the hard stuff. I have a wonderful book, The art of natural cheese making, by David Asher. He does not use commercial cultures, just uses whey from a previous batch (I drained yoghurt to get my first lot of whey). Then add rennet. So far I’ve made six tommes, each just under 2kg, and I can’t stop admiring them. Actually, the first one was 2.6kg, as the recipe says that 20 litres of milk makes a 2kg cheese. So I used 20 litres but got a 2.6kg cheese. I guess that means that my Clementine’s milk is high in butterfat.
I am extremely fortunate to have what could almost be called a cheese cave right under our house. It’s a cellar, lined on all four walls with thick sandstone, and with sandstone flagstones on the floor. The temperature is constantly around 15 degrees, and humidity is 90%.
I look forward to sharing cheese-making experiences with like-minded people out there. I grew up on a small dairy farm south of Hobart, then had house cows on our sheep farm for all the time that our children were home, then a break for twenty years, until I said I needed just one more. I just love them so much.
Now the long wait until the end of September to try our first hard cheese.