Hi Mal,
Thanks for that. I followed the Greening of Gavin page for Caerphilly. His recipe came from Making Artisan Cheese by Tim Smith. I used 9L of milk with two tablespoons of salt mixed in the broken up drained curds. I added no further salt apart from dabbing mould on the surface. I was swapping between brine and vinegar for that. Maybe it was this that imparted the salt. I subsequently gave up on the mould and just vacuum sealed the other half of the cheese. I'll get back to natural rinds once I sort out my humidity control issues.
I suspect with the first brie the problem was that the cheese height was not high enough, so the rind to paste ratio was a little high. That problem has been resolved since that batch. I never got to try the second batch, so I can only judge it's success by all of the people from my work wanting to order cheese from me.
Today I've placed an order with cheeselinks for some starter cultures, mould spores and hoops + baskets. I'm looking forward to getting them. I have ordered a couple of open bottomed brie hoops, so I'll get to do an 8L batch next time. The same mess for more cheese. Yay!
So, I take it from your pressing routine you never actually add salt directly to the curds. I've been doing the external salting already on the brie batches. Would that work for the Lancashire also? I might give that a go if it's the case.
This week will be feta, so I'll need to consider what will come after that. My cave is starting to get a little fuller. I have a full-size double cream brie, three camembert sized double cream brie, half a Caerphilly, a small blue and an Oompa Loompa coloured cheddar in there. I bought some more ripening containers today for more cheese.
Have a good weekend all.
Shane