Two days ago I cut 4 cheeses and I want to share my thoughts and questions.
I will start with the bad:
Parmesan made from 8L 3% p/h milk + 8L 1% p/h milk, 1/4 thermo + 1/4 sharp lipase.
Opened at 9 month old, turn out disgusting and wend directly to the garbage!
The taste and smell of the Lipase was so strong. Since my lasts experience with Lipase are quite the same I decided to stop using it. (All my new parmesans are from raw milk).
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,11088.0.htmlCheddar: This was made from 16L fresh raw milk that I pasteurized and it is 5 month old. The make of this cheese was very good. The texture is good but the taste is flat and I am very surprised the taste lack of salinity, no salinity at all.
Emmental: This is the first cheese I made from raw milk (16L) . I add 1/4 PS and the cheese is 5 month old. This cheese has the unique emmental smell that come out from the PS. The cheese has many holes some of them about 1cm but none of them look like a nice rounded hole. It has a nice taste but too sweet and little dry (not to dry but not elastic as it should be) even though I wax it at month and a half. I decided not to make emmental again but I do want to make gruyere and I will add a no more then 1/8 PS for 16L of milk.
Gouda: the Gouda turns out very good.
What most surprised with all of them is that there is no salinity at all even though there were in 20% salt brine for many hours. (22 hours for the Emmental).
Another problem with hard cheese I have is that I feel that the curds before press are too dry. Maybe it is because I am not using double boiler? I cut the curds to 0.5 cm and stirring gently.
I got the ExTech PH110 last week and made Gruyere. It took 45 minutes to get to 47C but more 45 minutes to the target P.H. Maybe it is also because of the direct heat that kill some of the starter? The made were from 16L of raw milk, 1/8 TA061 + 1/8 LH100 and I am using high quality stainless steel pot.