Hi Jeff, why do you think Gavin waxes his? I'd like to try aging them past 3 weeks. Yoav sent me a photo of 7 week old ones with natural moldy rinds that he said were lovely I think. They sure had some mold on them and looked great!
Bob, here's my make.....for the most recent batch that is.
Caerphilly Cheese 8/25/2012
Used raw goat milk: 13.5 quarts, 4 quarts of which were fresh from morning milking
Brought milk to 88 degrees
Added cultures: a shy ½ tsp. of MA4001 and a shy ½ tsp. of Thermophilic B
Let cultures rehydrate 5 minutes
Stirred and rested it 30 minutes
¾ tsp of double strength rennet added. I think I used too much because I was forgetting that I had double strength. I had lowered the amount somewhat but my floc time was only 6 minutes. I multiplied that by 4 to get a cut time of 24 minutes after rennet addition. I will have to adjust recipe next time for a longer floc time.
Cut curds with whisk and stirred to find uncut pieces and reduce size of them.
Rested 5 minutes
Raised temp from 91 to 96…….it got ahead of me. The temp was raised over the course of 25 minutes and then it got 40 minutes of intermittent stirring to keep curds from matting.
Removed excess whey and then strained the curds. They matted together and seemed quite firm so I skipped the step of cutting into slabs and letting them drain further. I was concerned they’d get too dry to press well.
Broke curd mass into small bits….roughly their original curd size
Added 1 ½ T of sea salt and mixed in.
Put into two molds and pressed at about 10 pounds under whey for 20 minutes
Took out, redressed and flipped and salted tops and bottoms
Put back into make-shift pressing contraption for another 20 minutes
Took out, flipped and redressed and put back into press….forgot to re-salt the tops and bottoms.
Pressing under about 20 pounds of weight, intending to do it for some time but not sure how many hours since I’m concerned the curds may have been overheated and the cheese may tend towards dryness.
Ended up pressing about 14 hours at that weight.
One went into brine and one is air drying.
I hope the one that I didn't brine is fine.....and develops a rind of some sort.
I've had naturally occurring B. Linens show up in my cheese fridge. (wine fridge) Not sure how it found me but it's been fine and I've washed it and some small blue spots off with salt/vinegar solution.
I've been trying watercolor pencils to mark my cheeses. I'll take a photo sometime to show what it looks like. I just wonder if it'll have to be relabeled if I have to wash mold off of it.
Oooh, sorry the photos show up sideways. Not sure why that happened. Well, just lay on your desk to view them!