Hi,
Have been reading this forum for some time and must say it's the best place for hobby cheesemakers!
Wanted to share my second Stilton type cheese, which is currently about 8 weeks.
Make did go well until bluing was supposed to show. At first is seemed that there was no blue appearing on the cheese at all, but on 7-th day there was some signs of blue. As I kept reading from other posts not to worry about blue showing up in first five days, so I didn't. Day 10 thourough smoothing with knife and off to the cellar.
No some really scary things started to happen. In addition to blue, it seemed to have all kinds of molds on it. It smelled not so much blue, but something mixed with PC etc. At some point I was really discouraged, but kept on turning them daily. Week 4,5 did the piercing and at this point it seemed to me that I had done at least something right - little crumbles of cheese tasted really good. So I decided to let it sit in the cellar a bit more.
I've been reading here that smaller batches tend to mature sooner, so after second piercing at week 7, I decided to cut into one of them. What a surprise! There was really nice veining and the smell was just right.
Trying to attach a picture of it as well. To me it seems that I could keep them for another week or two?