I have a cheddar that I made the end December. That makes it 6 months old. When I first bit into it, I'm thinking it's good. Then another flavor starts to show. My husband says it tastes like soap. I think musty, or earthy. There is a very small piece left, but I am still wanting to understand the flavor. I looked it up Gianaclis Caldwell's book and it says that soap flavor is rancidity and says that high levels of free fatty acids from anything causes a lipolysis. I don't know what that means. The solution says Limit the following: damaged milk fat flobules, raw milk with it's intact lipase, psychrotophic bacteria that can produce lipases, elevated temperatures during aging, molds in the milk.
The part I got out of that is to limit raw milk with it's intact lipase. I did use raw milk, and to date my best cheddar ever was pasteurized. The other one I understand is elevated temperatures during aging. My cave did get unplugged for 24 hours once, but I tasted the cheddar that I made the day after I made this one, and it does not have a soap flavor, and I used the same milk. I was experimenting on recipes so I made one on Saturday and one on Sunday. The one on Saturday had the soap taste, but the one on Sunday is just bad. It doesn't have soap taste though! It has high acidity. Dry, crumbly, tangy, hard.
I have pretty good notes on this cheese but can't pick out what might have caused it.
Any ideas for soapy or earthy flavor in cheddar?