Ordered the basics using the last of my Amazon card. From Midwest Homebrewing Supplies too, where I ordered my beer stuff at the end of that adventure
Tablet Vegetable Rennet - 10 ct.
Small Mold for Hard Cheese
Liquid Animal Rennet - 2 oz.
Mesophilic C101 - 5 Packets
Cheese Salt 8oz
Guess I'll be trying the basic recipe first, I have all the other supplies in my brewing gear
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm (http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm)
something else I've been wanting to get into. I've only ever made fresh cheeses like mozarella and fresh white cheese (queso fresco). just needed rennet, salt ,whole milk and citric acid
I decided to get the mold (the plastic round can, not mold mold) to make things easier - who in the hell has a coffee can anyway?
Probably whole foods carries the Rennet and Citric Acid. You could use canning salt I bet.
"canning" salt sounds like marketing to me
Blessed are the CheeseMakers
Heh
Canning salt was probably a thing you would have to go out of your way to buy in the 70s, you just want non-iodized salt. Now, with all the fancy salt it's not a big deal.
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oh shit. I thought this thread was gonna be about your posting style Shaft. my bad
The BS belongs in Gen Disc, vegan
listen Food Noob, this here's the new OFF. I don't care how many smites you have!
Be careful or i will MODERATE you both!
Okay.
priest, I am sorry I called you a vegan
I accept your apology. you may proceed to post about cheese, CSA's, pork shoulder, and anything else that is sure to annoy me
Okay vegan,
I got the items and am making round one tonight...
when you say "got", do you mean the CSA limo driver delivered them to you on a silver platter?
Is this thing on why are you always so far from making any damn sense? Do you even read anything I type on here? We're going on 10 years. I'm putting you on block and done with you forever.
The cheese is made and in the mold, after a day it goes in the fridge for a few weeks the gets waxed and stored for a month. We ate some of the curds and it was amazing - like cottage cheese.
(http://i1153.photobucket.com/albums/p520/madjohnshaft/photo.jpg)
Shhhh.... this cheese is sleeping
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm (http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm)
Although I forgot, with the left over whey you are suppose to make ricotta, so I got that to do tomorrow. I am suprised how good it smells.
(ricotta - there was no solids left in the whey so no ricotta showed up, doing Chedder instead)
(http://i1153.photobucket.com/albums/p520/madjohnshaft/photo-1.jpg)
Child labor making slave Cheddar
that slave laborer looks like he was just caught putting a booger in the cheddar pot.
you should change your slogan to "sorry for party blocking"
pretty fucking cool shaft.
so is it worth the trouble and expense?, over just buying some local cheeses?
We shall see.
Like anything artisan that is hand crafted? It's probably better done by the pros so I doubt it... more kind of cool. I wouldn't enter my beer or cooking or canning efforts into any sort of contest, it's just to do it for the fun of doing it, rather than to be great at it I just want to fuck around with it. Making cheddar is an 8 hour process elapsed, where you have to watch it for hours at a time keeping it at the proscribed temperature of 102 degrees or otherwise waiting to do the next step. You can't go wandering off.
I got the second cheddar wheel chilling out on the mantel for a few days. Looks much like that one in the fridge above so no picture needed. The curds were awesome all warm and freshly made though. That would be one hell of a nice gift to give someone or bring to a dinner get together... here, I made this cheese. I guess we'll see if it is good, great, excellent or what...
Now when I get some Goat's milk in a few weeks...
good job farmer scientist, that does indeed look and sound like fun...delicious fun. :)
I am proud. very nice addition to the "Food and Drink Forum" Juan !!!!
The Cheddar Cheese is now waxed. Family fun.
are you gonna try and age some? that would require patience...plus you can go buy the aged shit without having to wait ten years I guess.
Making Gouda, the milk guy had a sale so I got 4 qts of fancy whole milk. I got more aggressive with the mesophilic and rennet and it set up a lot firmer than the first two batches, figured out a better cheese press setup too.
Oh yeah
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Recipes/Make-Gouda-Cheese-951/Gouda-Cheese-Recipe-486.aspx (http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Recipes/Make-Gouda-Cheese-951/Gouda-Cheese-Recipe-486.aspx)
Opened two and brought them to my dads - the first one I made and the gouda. Keeping the cheddar to age a bit.
The first basic recipe was thick and creamy like a Brie, the Gouda was mild and had a nice texture and a crumbly salty appealing rind.
Both were excellent so I give this project an A+. The kids suggested I do event cheeses - make one when he starts high school and eat it at graduation.
I got the Thermo-whatever culture to try a Parmesan next. I got a couple of nicer pieces of cheese cloth, the grocery store cheese cloth is too sticky.
are there pics of the finished cheese that you're withholding, or did you not document the best part of such a formative moment in your personal culinary arc? i mean, c'mon.
Yes! The top one is the Gouda and the bottom is the creamy whatever the hell it is.
(http://i1153.photobucket.com/albums/p520/madjohnshaft/photo-4.jpg)
They do all sort of look the same, since there is no coloring and the press is the same, but they taste very different. I made a Parmesan this weekend. Parmesan gets oiled with olive oil at the 3, 6, 9 months mark and needs about a year. I suppose if I make cheese 10 times are year you get a back log going and a year out you always one or two ready to eat.
Oh yeah!
Maybe I will do a Parmesan-regianno next, you need goat milk for that. I know whole paycheck carries it but I need it to be not ultra-pasturized. The cheddar is the next one I can eat, just have to decide how long I can wait.
nice.
Nice work on the cheese.
"I got the Thermo-whatever culture to try a Parmesan next. I got a couple of nicer pieces of cheese cloth, the grocery store cheese cloth is too sticky."
You can apparently make your own starter cultures for both the low temp and high temp cheeses - yogurt and buttermilk use those same active whatevers - and you can stick some in milk and freeze in ice trays. You don't want them to die off so you can just keep making a new batch of starters when you get to the last cube. Interesting..... I did rinse and reuse yeast for beer once and it worked slick.
I would recommend getting cheese cloth from the cheese supply places - it is better than the store cheese cloth which is too wussy. They sell one that is made of plastic that works great and you can wash and re-use over and over. It worked great.
I will put a picture of my cheese press here later, since I came up with a kick ass solution....
Muslin cloth? It works for tofu making better than cheese cloth.
Yes that is right
Shaft admits to making tofu! closet vegan!
Clearly you've earned a promotion, vegan. Reading comprehension skills even worse than Fartbarth.
Flipping over a cheese everyday after work is good honest dedication and makes you smart for doing it. Who will flip my cheese when I am on Holiday?
^ this is why most real farmers never go on vacation.
That would be because of the need to milk cows
inextricably related
I would like to toot my own horn on this - those storage shelves with the plastic holders removed make a cheese press which you are seeing here on The Internets for the first time. This is now to be known as a MadJohnShaft Cheese Press setup.
(http://i1153.photobucket.com/albums/p520/madjohnshaft/photo-5.jpg)
Cheese press mind fuck
It budges not an inch to the north south east nor west, yet you can add and remove 50 pounds on it in the blink of an eye. If you store your cheese making supplies on that shelf, when you need that shelf.... It is already empty.
I like it. I love coming up with shit like that.
The Parmesan was olive oiled this last weekend. Other than that, cheese stands still for human time.
YOU SHOULD DIG A DUTCH CAVE UNDER YOUR HOUSE FOR YOUR GOUDA, GEK
and maybe a swiss cave, and do some gruyere.
As promised, the Asagio cheese split open so I dipped it in a brine bath everyday for a couple weeks hoping the salt layer would chill it out. We'll see.
I got four of them going, I should make a few more before my rennet gets old. They seem happy enough sitting in the fridge in the basement with no mold in evidence. Maybe I'll bust open one for Thanksgiving.
For Cheese October I made a cheddar again and put some homemade horseradish in it - it's resting in the living room.
I think Cheddar II has some mold under the wax. The fix is to un-wax it, cut off the mold, put a some dilute vinegar on the wound and rewax. It's like a little being you are going to eat. I recently read the wax needs to get up to 220 to get sterile.
I need a wine fridge for the cheese - the basement fridge has cheese, bread, meat, beer and stock in it. It's a little gamey.
I just made a Colby from the un-homogenized (but still gently PASTURIZED) Milk from the butcher store. It is sitting in a brine. I have messed up every single step. It didn't set up so I rebooted the rennet. Then we went out to dinner. I went to work so it got pressed for a whole day at too much weight. When I went to brine it this morning, the brine was frozen solid so it let it just sit in the laundry room in the basement a whole day.
(http://cdn.mashthosebuttons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/motivator4277439.jpg)
During my year off (2016) I made all kinds of cheese. I still have quite a lot aging. I'll dredge up some pics and memories soon.
Dang I still haven't posted and of my cheese.
Anyways. Totally cheese related. One of our local cheesemongers (Sarah) who is a very cool lady just won the Cheesemonger Invitational. So proud of her. When I go to Cheesebar I always feel lucky to have her assist me in my selections.
Got my cheese of the month haul. Theme is Goats milk.
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The cheddar is really mild but very dense and smooth.
The tomme de chevre' is nice and strong and a bit chewy. Super noms.
The Gouda is my favorite. So much depth and ooooh the calcium lactate crystals.
I love those little nuggets like pop rocks. I miss my Gouda, gonna find some smoked.
I'll prolly sign up for another 3 month deal if we're still alive.
Dug in the old cheese cellar. This is/was a Caerphilly I made a few years back. It was a salty and dry cheddaring process cheese. Turned out good. I made a few small wheels. let this half go. Now it's like a 40 month Parmesan.
(https://i.imgur.com/Fb793LE.jpg)
More like "Cheese My King" amirite?
Three year feta? Hmmm.
The other I think is a tomme
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So this was some blue I did. Inoculated with fourme d'ambert.
It was originally just so so. I cracked this the other day. Whoa. Didn't even taste it. Just chucked it. This is 3 years plus in the cheese fridge.
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Excellent entries nonetheless. I for one, applaud you. Please continue and kindly email discount subscription voucher please sir