Despite to my husband's serious illness, I've been making cheese over the last few months, really as a displacement activity, with somewhat unusual results at times, unsurprisingly. We won't even talk about the chaource of a couple of weeks ago , very strange outcome! Last week I attempted my first caerphilly, but went off course at one point, so would be pleased to have advice. Recipe a bit of an amalgam of Willman and Karlin plus threads here.
8l unhomogenised milk average 3.45% fat, heated to 32oC.
2% culture in the form of 4 ice cubes of flora danica and 1 of buttermilk (because there was no more FD in the freezer).
Ripened 30 minutes, added 1ml DS calf rennet. Flocc. time 18 minutes at 11:32am cut into 1cm cubes at 12:15, nice and firm.
Stood 5 minutes.
Stirred 15 minutes, started to warm (in double boiler) to 35oC.
This is where I had a senior moment. The temp reached 35oC... and kept going even though the heat had been turned off at 34oC. Took it out of the boiler and stirred and eventually the temp. stabilised at 41oC.
Drained whey.
Piled curd to one side of pot to drain, 30 minutes.
Cut into pieces and piled up. Drained 45 minutes.
Crumbled curds into pieces about 1cm
sprinkled 1 1/2 tspn. salt on curds, mixed around.
Put into mold and pressed at 5kg for 20 minutes.
Redressed, pressed 1.5 hrs.
Redressed, doubled weight and pressed overnight.
Brined 20% solution 12 hours.
Dried at room temp. for 4 days, last day unseasonally hot for winter, saw that the surface seemed very dry and cracks were appearing. Put into a container and put in a cooler place (temp. varies over the day 10oC-15oC). Cracks mostly closed up, only a couple of tiny ones remain.
Today, day 7, it seems almost dry (there was a tiny bit of moisture in the bottom of the box this morning) but the surface feels greasy. Planning to bag tomorrow if no more moisture in the box. I've had to take several cheeses out of the bags and redry them, so want to be sure its dry enough when I bag it.
3 questions -
first, what will be the impact of taking the temp. too high? I can see that more whey has been expelled as this morning it weighed 921g while the Havarti I made a few weeks ago with a similar milk mix weighed 1160g. at the same age. My guess is that this temp. would have killed off the meso culture. Advice please.
second, not all recipes for caerphilly do the cheddaring process - I would have thought that cheddaring would lead to a drier curd and therefore a cheese which would respond to longer maturing. Is that correct? What's the general feeling as to the right process for an authentic caerphilly?
Third, why the greasy feeling? Is this usual? I've had it with other cheeses as well, but not everything I've made.
Margaret