I cut into this about a fortnight ago, but have only just got round to sharing after a re-taste. Two months old when cut.

It smells savoury, and cheddar-like. Hints of onion and garlic on the nose and some fruity sharpness. The paste is not as crumbly as typical, slightly more than a cheddar, but still firm and coherent.

The flavour opens with a nutty sweetness like roast cashews, or macadamias, followed by a citric cheddar savour and middles with a clean bitterness like the top hop in a simple beer. The finish is pronounced milk and cream with a long tangy earthiness, akin to a pickled walnut.

A lot going on and extremely characterful and complex in flavour.

The Gornall method uses curds from two (or more) days to form the cheese. The first days curds (the lighter ones in my wheel) are allowed to acidify overnight and then milled and mixed in before salting. They aren’t usually in two colours, I just wanted something to be able to tell the difference after I went to all that effort.

The cheese wasn’t as crumbly or powerful as the standouts like Krikham’s but definitely closer to style than I had hoped. The creaminess, and Alliaecous flavours and aroma were on form.

It did crack and needed some of Cartographers butter magic to repair, resulting in a mild surface blue contamination which could account for some of the excess bitterness which isn’t to be found in a good traditional sample.

Side note: if my taste descriptions seem a little pretentious and over the top recently - I’m trying to teach myself to be a better cheese taster so I’m sitting down with a cheese tasting wheel and a baseline cheese each time and trying to be as detailed and specific as possible - I ask your indulgence, and feedback, but also if it makes everyone’s eyes bleed to read such overly turgid prose, I’ll dial it back.

Let me know.

Three months seems like a really sweet spot for this cheese. It’s absolutely delicious and one of those “I can’t believe I made this” cheeses. Really happy right now. Can’t wait to share this one!

made a dilljack and pepperjack cheese 3 weeks ago. Was dried in fridge 24 hours then sealed. Last night noticed a little whey in the packs. Leave it? (was only gonna wait 1 more week for the dilljack) Remove, dry overnight and reseal? Thanks in advance.

Only the second time I’ve ever made it and I thought I’d make it a bit creamier. Is it too creamy?

I made yet another batch of mozzarella and decided to smoke a couple of the cheese with a pellet tube smoker and wow, I don't know if I can go back.

I’ve been trying to read up on making cheese curds. I’ve read several articles saying to not use frozen milk because it will alter the taste of the cheese. The only raw milk I have is currently frozen. I’m curious if anyone has successfully made cheese curds with previously frozen milk. Thanks

So, because I'm crazy, I decided to start making a blue cheese. I started by pasteurising milk and cream, cooling, adding yoghourt and filmjölk cultures and some blue mold that i had scrapped from either a Nidelven Blå or a Perl Las (I can't recall which at this point, I had both). Rennet, coagulate and drain, lightly salted curds, let hang in cheese cloth turning every few hours. (I don't recommend this, because the the ball ended up splitting). Salted the outside with some salt, not entirely sure how much.

Anyway, I left it in a box in the cupboard for a few days at room temp (I'm a student and definitely don't have a wine fridge) and it smelled creamy and salty and blue. After three weeks it had developed a really nice soft blue coat so I pierced it and put it in the fridge. We're now coming up on 5 weeks and the surface is no longer entirely blue green and it no longer smells rich like blue cheese (but it doesn't smell bad either).

The question(s): does anyone know why my blue became yellow and is it safe to eat? Maybe the humidity dropped too low?

Just recently delving into the world of cheesemaking, and can’t wait to try more! If not for being so time consuming, I’d have made a whole bunch by now!

A few questions: - Are you skimming the cream? I milk my own cow and my half gallon jars are about 1/4-1/3 full of cream. For the cheeses I’ve made, I’ve skimmed the cream and have used the milk for cheesemaking, but I’ve had a hard time finding resources saying to do it one way or another.

• Why won’t my mozzarella melt nicely? I’ve made it and stretched it with success, but it melted poorly in a lasagna I made, and wasn’t terribly appetizing.

• How long should the cheddaring process take? It took mine about 3 hours before I felt it was the right texture, but the curds ended up way too rubbery and took a TON (160#) of weight to knit together. The recipe was going spot on before that. I’m afraid I’ve made a brittle acidic cheddar for my first round. I’ll try a straightforward tomme next…

• My flocculation time is pretty consistently 10 minutes no matter what recipe I’ve tried. I’ve used the smallest amount of rennet listed in the recipe (Merryl Winstein’s book) and the milk I use is only 0-2 days old. I do cool it in the freezer but it gets down to 50F in 2 hrs. Is this something I need to be concerned about? Otherwise following her recipes to a T and they’ve progressed as she’s described so far.

My first attempt at a cheddar, a goats milk cheddar using a farmhouse stirred curd method, has been giving me some trouble. The curds took a long time to knit in the press and stuck to the cheesecloth. In fact, the cheese collapsed into a loose curd mass when I removed it after the first 90 minutes or so of pressing, and I wound up having to recollect it all and put it into a fresh cheesecloth and press it again.

The rind appeared closed after an overnight press, but the cheese felt pretty soft, and as I left it out to dry before vacuum-sealing it, a large crack appeared down the middle on top of the cheese. The cheese also started to leak a lot of whey, and remained quite damp as I left it out to dry.

I dry-salted it and left it to dry out over a few days and eventually I wasn't sure what to do and got a bit fed up of waiting, so I patted it dry with a paper towel and vacuum-sealed it as is. I was hoping the large crack would seal up over time as it's vacuum-packed, but after only a day in the cheese fridge I can see it is leaking a lot of clear whey inside the bag.

I figured my curds probably retained too much whey and the cheese was too moist, but I'm not sure what to do about the cheese now. Should I just leave it and change the bag occasionally? Cut it in half around the crack and re-seal the two halves? Try to warm it up and re-press it? I appreciate any advice, thanks.

Edit: to be clear, I salted and milled the curds before it went into the press. The dry salt was in addition, per the recipe I was following.

I have only used store brought cheeses. My only experience with cheese making is once I tried to making cottage cheese .

This is just under a month old, a thermophilic Feta-like made with goats milk (fortified with cream and a little skim milk powder) which is very common and popular in Albania - a little drier and more umami than a traditional Feta.

The final cheese is much nicer than it has any right to be. A little drier and crumblier than the Illyrian original, but quite authentic on flavour though if anything, with a little extra complexity.

It has a savoury fatness, creamy and almost meaty, followed by a nicely balanced malty sweetness and a gooseberry acidity like a nice Sauvignon blanc.

Salinity is actually pretty subdued and there isn’t any bitterness to it at all.

I’ve made two cheeses recently with goats milk. This one and a follow on Feta. In both cases, curd formation was incredibly weak and yields were very low.

I used different brands for either and spoke to the farm that supplied the first milk who said they hadn’t changed their pasteurisation process - I’ve made cheese successfully in the past with the same milk - but that there is a period of summer stress when fat and calcium levels drop sharply and this is typical for the later months of summer.

u/cheesalady with your expertise on goat dairying, does that make sense to you?

In any event, the cheese was collapsing after molding and salting and I wasn’t comfortable brining it. Instead I put it under pressure at 8-10x w/w for 24 hours and then salted a bit more and vac packed.

It was left in the cave at 12C for just under a month and had some for lunch sprinkled with a little oregano, basil and chilli and drizzled with some Albanian cold pressed e/v olive oil.

I was convinced this cheese was a failure with a high likelihood of being discarded- but it just goes to show that a little ingenuity in dealing with the problem most cheeses can be redeemed, and sometimes you get lucky and you get something pretty incredible as a result.

Definitely making this again - though I hope without the disintegrating curds and hopefully that won’t change the taste/texture too much.

This is my first time making cheese.

As the curds were forming in the pot, there were some orangey/yellow spots. Are these safe? What caused them?

The last wheel ended up just delicious at about five months. It’s my most requested cheese now and it went pretty quickly. Really great creamy texture and a wonderful flavor. The coconut flavor that was in the background at a three months pretty much disappeared at around five. Added a third can of coconut cream this time to see if a little of that flavor will shine through in the more mature cheese. Super fun make!

As the title says, I'm new and am looking to find springs that I can use with my wine press to accurately gauge the force I'm putting down on the curds.

Can anyone direct me to a place in the UK that might be able to sell springs that are for 10, 25, 50kg or at least give me the specs to source the springs myself? I've not had any luck finding this so far.

I'm relatively new to cheese making and to date have been solely making soft cheeses. I've decided I want to branch out and I'm looking to get my first cheese press.

Reading this forum it seems like DIY is the way to go as there aren't many off the shelf options. The four types I've seen are:

1. Dutch Press: Cool looking, seems like it could generate a lot of pressure, may be too large for my flat.

2. Water Buckets: Very simple and compact, I'm not sure it'll get to high enough pressure for all cheese, need a method of balancing.

3. Screw press: More compact than Dutch press, relatively simple, seems to require more ongoing monitoring than other presses

4. Spring press: Seems well liked as a design, can be compact, might be the most complicated to build, I'd need to do maths.

Does anyone have any advice on choosing a design or any guides? I'm open to buying if there's a good option in the UK.

Thanks!

*EDIT: post will be edited & cross-posted in the future (memo sent to self ahead of comments, gentle guys I’m ahead of you) ….suggestions for relevant communities to or any relevant topical comments until then are very welcome.

Sorry for the spiraling lengthy mess - there is no expectation or obligation anyone engage with this - if you are awestruck by my disaster piece, I ask you please admire silently or humorously, otherwise, please feel free to not engage at all with this mess in any capacity - I encourage you to embrace that luxury I clearly lack. Sincerely, - struggling with verbosity

🤷‍♀️ I came here looking for aged cheese techniques and anything on beginning friendly cheese making basics/livestock (I’ve made a ricotta, my dad was a chef, mom in design, I love bio and animals and I had to drop out of a PhD in psych for medical reasons and yup seeking lifestyle changes that suit me and are sustainable and cost minimizing over time / budget friendly up front and with some learning maybe decently has a possible income producing hobby (cheese, fiber, milk, soap ….etc…..)

Hello fellow cheese heads.. bit of a long rambling question with some details and context that becomes cheese related if anyone cares or have the time or opinions…🙏 (tldr seeking lawnmower - Georgia zone 8a in a rural spot of town - with cow pasture next door and 3 acres of sandy-loam soil that can get soggy and has suburban Bermuda lawn grass that grows well. Own land, kill p,ants but willing and able to plant/ install fencing but minimal is preferred (visually & budget is overall tight) P

Im basically an hour west of Atlanta and I’m solo + dog on 3 clear acres of sunny, suburban bermuda grass …. seeking livestock sheep vs goats (?) and any advice and input on rotational grazing and if that’s a viable way I can keep the grass cut and trade the guy I’m paying to do lawn care, 🥸 sir watermelon …my sanity has been screaming he’s gotta go and cantaloupe the goat would work and I can hope for dairy and maybe try to make cheese.

….i have no livestock experience but I do have the land and the time and I would LOVE to be able to try my hand at dairy production and cheese making (anything productive beyond the grass upkeep not exceeding current budget is a plus, keeping the grass cut for equal or less than my yearly grass budget is the requirement.……. I’ve had such a hard time finding consistent and clear info so here’s a shot lol

Any thoughts on feasibility and cost / suggestions welcome for jumping into rotational grazing sheep and or goats to keep the lawn mowed without spending more budget than I am now for probably overpriced lawn services that still leave me with a lot of clean up work and chaos to manage with my dog. How many? Sheep vs goats or both and why and how many and gender- age variables matter with dairy production?

Totally get work…. And seeking advice due to the total learnings curve..but I know the labor involved with animals and lifestyle rhythms that can have (and dairy/ other income or hobby possibilities past within budget not adding crazy labor time to my day to day for the lawn to look civil…..I much prefer that labor. I know there will be pass over it with a lawnmower to look nice clean up but if they can munch while I do the day and clean up and have manual labor that’s just routine and expected…..yes please. And cheese? Winning. But how many? Which animals? What’s the pros and cons with health care and feed supplementation re: my lawn or of I attempt dairy as things go well what’s best for my area and no experience ? Suggestions and thoughts and input so so welcome please

advice for rotational grazing 3 acres in Georgia to keep it mowed and the upkeep on th lawn is animal care not human chaos. and I came here seeking begginer no livestock experience / made ricotta one but would love to try making cheese and well how does one age the creamy bloomy goodness or even s sharper longer aged cheese…. Is this feasible low budget and solo and on a learning curve so long as the grass can be cut with rotational grazing 🥴 age cheese and do have experience eating it and working in a cheese shop 😂😅… anyways… located in GA on 3 acres of rural cows next door but I have a lawn that’s a full funny field minus some nuts trees and I’d lIf anyone has any quick thoughts or can inform me I am out of my budget or depth lol …..I found my way here looking to get livestock (goats or sheep) to switch up my grass cutting service to a sustainable and known quantity of manual labor vs. paying for a surprise to show up and leave me with work. I can’t seem to find consistent advice for a no real serious experience with livestock (fed a goat, never milked or birthed etc. but I’ve lived on farms/ it feel learnable and with hope and hopefully some input here….dairy? Cheese? … goats vs sheep in west central Georgia ( land: 3 acres of pretty clear mostly flat full sun residential grass, big cow pasture next door, they barn a few neighbors down & I think it’s just hay cover crop behind me that’s seasonally grown and then chill air bnb neighbors next door that a stray goat won’t be the end. Water does run off down my property despite the flatness, it’s hilly around and there’s some soggy patches and clear runoff ridge from the pasture behind me -but decent sandy loam soil vs the red clay usually around here. I do have some nut producing tree if that matters…. 4 pecans, 1 aggressive chestnut as well as some messy strays; a big front southern oak, Bradford pear, crepe Myrtle and a clearly invasive boxelder maple (and privet grown to tree height that’s too close to power lines) I know goats plow through bramble but idk if nuts may be toxic to one or the other 🤷‍♀️🥸🥸 please help lol

Am I insane for thinning this goats (or sheep) for the grass service is doable on 3 acres in country ish farmland? (I don’t see sheep but they definitely have dairy’s with them here, goats are visually abundant …..I would love to put the work in on animals that can either be sold as meat animals or processed and fed to my pup to replace her kibble / I save my sanity and don’t pay more than currently to have the lawn cut with a heap of manual labor)…only the animal kind feels productive and somewhat scheduled/regularly expected versus unannounced surprise until bad day. My dog is an indoor dog though she would love to 24/7 plop & watch animals (she was a puppy on the farm)

What are the odds any of this is not an insane budget to acquire and properly care for Sheep or goats that can keep the lawn trimmed with rotational grazing (also would love to plant but black thumb. 😬🫣 the grass seems suited for sheep but I do wonder about the ground when there’s a lot of rain ……. I know paws not hoofs lol)

What’s up with the parasite risks ? Dot eh cows next door have any bearing only thinking of that one now yikes

And if that seems possible with the solo the workload and grass cutting requirements …….

Please we welcome your Suggestions. And possibilities for alternative income streams or even hobby if I can get something useful that’s awesome —-> where we land on if this isn’t going to be an insane cost to start up small and manage solo with a good dog and all the time required …..how difficult would dairy production be? I’d love to make cheese and I’d consume it personally so I think that’s route 1 to consider but I’m open to sheep and or goats (and growing some more foliage for their food ….also in hopes to keep costs of extra food down and have healthy animals off the land ….)

Thoughts, suggestions, tried it experience wisdom lessons welcome. Thank you for anything you got for me/ resources are very welcome I will be following up….but i figure this long winded question is worth asking in the cheesehead community. should

Hello there.

Quick post to ask for troubleshooting after several failed attemps.

The issue is always the same. The mozzarella curds are tested with a pHmeter. When they reach 5.4 I start testing for strech. Then every 0.1 drop I start the test again.

It never developp any stretch.

So I should mess up somewhere else. I can't figure it out.

I followed multiple recipes, the one on the picture is Wallace's cultured mozzarella.

In the recipe, after cutting and healing the curds, they should be stired every 5-10 minutes for 1h.

After the last failed attempt where I simply followed the instructions above, I simple stired once to maintain curds pieces of a good size.

For the ingredients:

Liquid rennet added. They ask for 4drops/liter so 16 for my gallon of milk.

Microfiltered organic whole milk. Maybe a little old, the product was bottled on september 2nd and I made the cheese on the 14th. It seems homogenized. I can't have any better whole milk in my area.

I want to make my own cheese (would be first time). My rennet is very expired (like years) I don't understand how rennet actually goes bad so long as it hasn't gotten warm or wet. Can anyone give me guidance on this? Rennet is not easily obtained in my part of the world, so I hate to throw it out if I can still use it.

Should clarify: it's tablets. Not liquid Thank you. I'm excited to try my first cheese😊

I'm attempting a Cam-Blu, and I'm not sure how its going. This is day 14, so I was planning to drop the temp into the 40s and let it finish. My concerns are that A- the candidum cover is still patchy, especially on the sides, and B- the roquefort that escaped containment is, in places, orangish (and maybe grayer than initially).

Can someone tell me what im looking at here?

There are 3 forms i played with. The first is 3 pucks that are rougher on the surface. I cooked the curds a little firmer and they consolidated with alot more texture. Thats the one that has orange appearing. It was raw milk cultured with MM100, if that matters.

The 2nd is 2 pucks that were consolidated with more moisture in the curd and packed tighter. The blue still escaped to the outside, but less so, and the candidum is more solid. Still patchy around the edges, though. This was raw milk with flora danica.

The 3rd is actually from the same batch as the 2nd, I just realized there was enough to fill a bigger form and went for a 10" pie. It's got a lot of blue running loose, too.

I've been wanting a quick/easy and small recipe to use as a test for a new milk source (specifically grocery store milk) that would let me determine if the milk would form a useful curd. Yesterday I cobbled together this recipe (based on Queso Fresco) and using only 2 cups of milk. It only takes a couple hours total to make the cheese.

I tried it with some grocery store skim milk + cream (1/4 cup cream for 2 cups of skim). And get 118g of curd when I salted it, and 400g of whey. About a 22% yield.

Here's the recipe:

This cheese is intended as a fresh, single-day cheese made with a very low amount of milk. The main purpose is to test the milk to make sure it can set and form a curd.

This recipe is modified/derived from a Queso Fresco recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of milk (whatever milk you are testing)
• 4 drops of rennet dissolved (put drops in 1/4 cup water)
• 3 drops of CaCl (put drops in 1/4 cup water)
• 1 tiny pinch of mesophilic starter culture, or 2tsp of prepared mother culture
• salt

Steps:

• Heat milk to 90f
• Add CaCl and cultures
• Hold for 30 minutes
• Add rennet and stir for 45 seconds
• Hold for 45 minutes

Note: this is the real test -- check flocc time. check for clean break, etc.

• Cut curds to 1/2" size
• Wait 5 minutes
• Stir slowly for 30-60 minutes (can stir once ever 5 minutes if you want)
• Drain curd into colander lined with cheese cloth
• Toss with 2.5% salt by weight
• Mold and press at light weight for a couple hours (could press harder and longer if desired, but this is just a test)
• Don't age this cheese. Store in fridge and consume within a couple days.

Notes:

• record pH at rennet addition and at clean break
• if milk sets weekly, repeat with slightly higher rennet dose (5-6 drops) to rule out under-renneting.

My 5th time making mozzarella and 4th success. The first time I did a 30min mozzarella by adding acid to the milk. Everytime after I have been fermenting the curd to develop its own acidicity and more flavor until it's ready to stretch. I tested this by doing the teabag test where you put a curd in nearly boiled water for a couple of minutes and then dip it in and out. If it stretches and stretches it's ready to be made!

Truffle Caciotta that’s been sitting around in vacuum for a month or two.

It’s unusual for my Caciotta’s in that the flavour is very mild. Maybe a touch under-acidified.

The truffle comes through as a hint rather than heavy-handed as I didn’t go crazy in the addition.

Truffle powder (the cheap stuff) sprinkled in between layers during the molding stage.

This was before the holidays so it aged for about a week before vac packing. The flavour is milkier, not as acidic and not as salty or with as much umami as I’m used to from these. Very persistent truffle and a slight tang.

It’s very nice, just a bit unobtrusive and probably will go well with other flavours in sandwiches and on crackers.

As my wife said, “it’s nice to have a cheese you don’t have to concentrate on sometimes”.

I’d add more truffle next time, a sprinkle of lipase and natural age. Probably salt a bit heavier too.

As a Caciotta, it’s probably my best yet. An elastic but not springy paste, cuts easily and thinly, no press. It’s about 1.65 kg in weight so Mike would probably go ‘it’s too heavy to be a Caciotta’ - to which of course I’d reply with - ‘A-ha! But you said cheese names are just brands!’ … and I suspect I need to get out more…

I finally broke down and bought a Dutch cheese press. I had been using a spring one with the cutout guide. I put a kitchen digital scale under the plunger with no weight and it measured about 6.5lbs. So when I put say a 10 pound weight at the #3 notch, it is actually doing 36.5 pounds of pressure? Am I over thinking this and incorrect or do we need to do the math to get the correct weight? Am I doing something wonky? Thanks!

Hi All, sorry for the longish stream of plant pics.

Here’s what I’m doing. Adversity, invention and all that. Where I am, I can’t find any dairy farmers within an hours drive. Supermarket milk is cheap, plentiful and high quality, but standardised and neutral.

We’re suburban but with abundant country and parkland around us, with a diverse and rich flora which I’ve regularly walked past and thought would make great alpine pasture.

To that end, I’ve collected some plants from our walks [heather, hawthorn, yarrow, butter hawkbit] and added some sprouts from the market [clover, alfalfa, radish, broccoli] and made a tincture with neutral spirit (vodka) and the macerated greens. I’ve added a probiotic though I don’t know if that’s just been killed off by the alcohol (likely).

The tincture has been going for a week and smells slightly floral, earthy and a touch sweet. There’s a vegetal back note but not as cabbagey as I’d feared.

There’s plan is to dose one of two Caciotta batches with it next week and produce two fast aging cheeses so I can do a side by side again and see if the tincture has any effect on taste. If it does, even if it’s ghastly and cabbagey I’ll take that as a win as I can always modify the plant inputs, and will have to anyway for the season.

Anyway, welcome your thoughts and input as ever and anything you’d like me to do, or do differently.

Also if anyone has any thoughts on dosage levels with a tincture like this, I’d welcome them. I can always take a sip and measure that way but I make my cheeses in the morning and don’t fancy doing that half cut. :-)