Opened first two hard cheeses! "Maybe Manchego" is a hit!

[sarak]

I could not wait any longer.  Not that I was at all confident that the hard cheeses would be edible, but after tasting a cam from my first set (it was made on 1/11, but it was soft in the fridge) - which was a FAIL, I decided to open up a hard cheese to see if I could salvage my self esteem.

Well, farmhouse cheddar number 1 was a bit crumbly and tasted sour, actually.  At first I described it as tasting like it was an aged cheddar that was not quite right - maybe too tangy.  But after tasting it again, it actually tasted sour. I am not sure what caused that... ideas?

So I had now tasted one abject, throw-it-in-the-trash cam, and an off-tasting cheddar, I was beginning to feel careless and dejected.  So I figured I'd open the "might-be-manchego" that was made on 1/4.  At the time, I thought the make was a bit of a disaster, and I posted about it here - http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,12330.msg95196.html#msg95196 .  I opened it up, with picky 12 yr old daughter by my side, and ...

The cheese is smooth, but not at all rubbery. It actually reminds me of the texture of those baby bells (the small round cheeses with red wax to pack in lunches). It  tastes pleasant - very much like a young manchego, actually. My daughter can't get enough.  She has already told me that I cannot give any away - that the rest is for her school lunches, or general snacking.  I don't know about that.  The cheese looks like it would melt wonderfully. 

Looking back over my obsessively detailed cheese diary, it is clear that most of the make I spent over-correcting temperature issues and screwing up in a variety of other ways.  The yield was relatively small, too.  So this final product essentially had very little to do with the recipe I INTENDED to follow, but A SUCCESS NONE-THE-LESS!!

[jwalker]

A cheese to you Sara for sticking with it.

Cheddars can be finniky , I've had a couple go sour too , I aged them longer and they just got worse , and others have turned out great , I still haven't figured out what went wrong with the sour ones.

So your "might-be-manchego" is only just under one month old ?

Cheese on !

[sarak]

Baby-might-be-manchego turned 29 days old today.  I should call her "la nina Manchegeta".  I re-waxed as much as I could wrestle away from daughter and husband - which ended up being about 2/3.  I'm bringing some to a friend who got the cheese bug when I first gave him some goat cheese in December.  I will plan on re-cutting in five weeks when a dear friend from out of town comes to stay with us.  It is not a huge cheese - I started with 2 gallons of goat milk and it was only about 3/4 of the size of my sour cheddar or good-looking gouda (which I only  waxed today).  I definitely over heated the curds and was a little rough with the stirring.  The funny thing is that I just got an amazing manchego mould from Artisan Geek (artisangeek.com).  I think it is sign that my next cheese attempt should be another manchego.  Honestly I don't have much choice but to get better at this - with the amount of milk my Nigerian dwarf is putting out I get about 3 gallons a week.  I can't stand the idea of wasting it, and we really don't drink much milk at all, but we love cheese. 

I also re-waxed the cheddar - If it still tastes sour in a few weeks, I plan chucking it. 

And THANK YOU for my first cheese! 

[JeffHamm]

Hi sarak,

First of all, congratulations on the success of your manchego!  A cheese to you on that.  Second, how old is this sour cheddar?  Most cheddar types really need to age a minimum of 3 months, and personally, for all the work that goes into them, you really should age them out to 6 or 8 months.  If you waxed it early (as in before it was 6 to 8 weeks old), it's quite possible that the sour taste is because the whey that is still in the cheese from the make, and which normally evaporates over the first while, is now trapped in the cheese.  You might find the cheese is wet under the wax, if so, it's not finished drying out.  For a cheddar, if your cheese is still weighing more than a pound per gallon, that extra weight is just trapped whey and it needs to dry out more.  Anyway, if it's heavier than it should be, then I recommend removing the wax, aging it in a ripening box until it weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 1 lbs per gallon of the make.  Then, if you want, wax it, and continue to age it until it is at least 3 or 4 months old.  Then see how it tastes.  Even if it's not great then, rewax it and through it in the back of the cave and forget about it for awhile.  Find it sometime around Christmas and see if it's gotten any better.  Some cheeses just need a lot of time to come into their own. 

- Jeff

[GlennK]

Good advice Jeff.  I've this same sour, crumbly problem with the only cheddar I tried and I suspect it will happen with the Colby I have in the cave. 

[cowboycheese]

If you followed one of the washed curd recipes for Colby/Longhorn then you should be in better shape with that cheese. They don't age well at all so consider slicing into that one after 6 weeks or so. I bet you will be rather surprised with the taste your colby as compared to the young cheddar. A cheese to both of you for your successes and consider it all a learning experience! The Manchego is on my list too.

I find it easier to mess with recipes and try different things. Sometimes it doesn't work out all that well and you know which direction to not go next time. The hard part of this obsession is learning the patience part when having to age for longer times. Just like I want to taste it now, I want more patience now!