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According to my affinage records ( as an ex-schoolteacher I love those records ) we won’t be tasting it until July 2015! We waxed it after 3 weeks of flipping and washing with a simple brine at room temp and it’s now in the cheese fridge along with an emmenthaler which is also waxed -THAT was fun!
This is such a rewarding obsession, when things go to plan! Your plan, or deviation, looks as if it paid off beautifully. We haven’t had the nerve to vary from the recipes too much having just made about 6 different types of cheeses. We’ve got about five different kinds of homegrown chillis in the freezer so we might give that a go –
That is a beautiful looking cheddar – did you do the traditional cheddaring method or go for the farmhouse cheddar? Our first attempt at a traditional cheddar ended in the ugliest cheese I’ve seen – it’s holding together but it’s hard as a brick and you can see every curd in outline.
Well, it looks like parmesan – definitely much smaller curd size due to higher temperature scald, I guess. We’re leaving it until July next year, exercising great patience. The cheese is 880g from 8 litres of raw milk – not sure if this is an ok yield or if we maybe stirred a bit too much. I used the skimmed off cream to make a double batch of Blasphemous Ricotta, which was shared with friends on crostini, under caponata – delicious.
Right, so we started making an Emmenthaler, not a Gruyere, before I got your last reply and took liberties with the quantities of starters.
We ended up with 8L of raw cow’s milk, and added 1/8 tsp Thermophilic DY17 plus 1/32 tsp L. helveticus. Then added 1/32 + 1/64 tsp Propionic shermanii !! Close to 1/16 tsp if my maths doesn’t fail me. Whether these quantities are ok – only time will tell, I guess. We had another hiccup with the rennet – added 1/4 tsp calf rennet and at 1 and 1/2 hours still no sign of curd formation so added another 1/4 tsp and finally got clean break at 2hr 10min!! Don’t know if that will affect the final cheese but followed Curd Nerd Emmenthaler recipe to the letter for the rest of the process and the cheese bobbing now in the brine looks very inviting. Sorry for all the detail.
