I made a go of this one at Jeff's suggestion, since I have access to cow and goat milk. I think alpine style cheese is more difficult for me, with the higher cook temps and the stirring to keep the curd from matting prematurely. The curds felt ready to hoop before the recommended final stirring at temperature for 15 minutes, but I went ahead with the stirring, and ended up feeling like I had over-stirred. It was difficult to get the cheese to knit together in the form. This may have been due to stirring too long, and may have been aggravated by not having a form that was quite the correct volume.
The make was a bit different from Jeff’s, because in the online reading I did about this cheese it seemed like a version of alpine cheese quite similar in make to Caldwell’s “Hard Cheese with Small Eyes”. Following that plan gave me flocculation multiplier and pH targets.
I probably will not age this out very far, being interested in how it turned out. And I probably will do a cleanish rind rather than a washed rind, still not being familiar with the latter.
Make details are in the Spread sheet at the bottom of the posting.
