Author Topic: My second gouda  (Read 2006 times)

Red

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My second gouda
« on: February 11, 2013, 06:27:51 AM »
Hi,

I just put my second Gouda into the cave (wine fridge).  The first one surprised me and turned out so good....we'll see about this one.

I used linuxboy's recipe from wacheese.com, but only 8 litres of milk.  7 litres 3.25% non-homogenized and 1 litre of skim, all organic.  The dairy is actually just down the road from my in-laws farm. 

I managed to stay mostly accurate to the recipe, except my cutting the curds was very uneven, and I didn't do enough to break up the bigger curds while stirring.  I could see the problem with this especially during the final stirring stage, where I had smaller curds wanting to mat together, at the same time as much bigger, softer curds.  As many do I'm sure, I'm imagining how to cheaply and easily create something to cut my curds more evenly.  but that's another post....

With my off the wall press, I pressed in my mold under warm whey for 10 min, then flipped and pressed under more weight for 1 hour, flipped and then 5 more hours.  I cut a new cutting board follower for my mold that is much better than the stainless lid I was using before.
I guess because I had some mechanical holes inside my last cheese, I added more weight to the end of my press.  Maybe too much?  My press is  3:1  and I added a 20lb weight, 60 lbs more than last time!  this might be around 7 psi if I've guessed the weight of the press arm correctly.  I don't have a scale to check the pressing weight total. 

Brined in a completely saturated brine for 6 hours, flipping once. 

This cheese seemed to dry on the surface much faster than my last cheese.  It also seemed to sag a bit, the sides bulged out slightly...
I let it dry 4 days(longer than I meant to...) and waxed. 

I forgot to take a picture before wax!  Here's one with wax...

Offline Tiarella

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Re: My second gouda
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2013, 12:07:03 PM »
Lovely and cute little cheese!  Congratulations.  My cheeses are drying too fast in the dry winter air in my house so I've resorted to draping them with some synthetic cheese cloth while they are drying in room air.  This slows it down.  Or sometimes I've used a container partly over them to limit their air exposure and slow the drying of the skin.  otherwise I think the skin dries before the insides.

Offline Vina

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Re: My second gouda
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2013, 01:57:57 PM »
well, I had that experience with rind drying too fast, i have two wheels of caerphilly with cracks :(

Offline Boofer

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Re: My second gouda
« Reply #3 on: February 13, 2013, 12:42:50 AM »
I forgot to take a picture before wax!  Here's one with wax...
Wow, it sticks to your hand! ??? ::)

-Boofer-
Let's ferment something!
Bread, beer, wine, cheese...it's all good.

Red

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Re: My second gouda
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2013, 01:06:24 AM »
Im not sure why my photos keep rotating and getting squashed!

As for drying, the rind looks solid, no cracking at all. It just seemed less moist on the surface right from the start. Maybe from the heavier pressing weight. Here in Vancouver, it's very rainy all winter, so even with forced air heating, it's never too dry in the house.