Cheddar #4

[John@PC]

It's been a few weeks since I made this cheese and finally got everything together to post including a video guaranteed to solve any insomnia problems you may have  .  This was my 4th cheddar and my 163'd cheese made. Chose a cheddar because I wanted to use the XX press with a milled cheese to test it at higher pressures.

Recipe was Caldwell's:
Ingredients
  4 gal. whole cows milk
  1/2 tsp.  MA4001
  3/8 tsp. annatto
  1/2 tsp. (plus) single strength rennet
  Kosher salt @ 2% of curd weight

A long make typical of a cheddar so I attached the make log (it's the first attachment below: Cheddar 4.xlsx).  All in all a very good result except a week after I made it I had to go out of town and vacuum bagged it which caused the wrinkles you see in the last picture .  Anyway I have rubbed it with coconut oil and plan to do a natural rind or maybe cloth wrap.

Watch video

[awakephd]

Very nice! and 163 cheeses -- wow! Here's another C4U.

[Kern]

Dang, John, what can I say?  Great pictures, a great video, great narration with the right amount of "south" in the voice and AC4U, my friend!   

[Stinky]

Agreed on all the points above. Feel free to send anything to me for testing, if you need it tested... 

I need to make a curd cutter that works in a round pot better than a bread knife sometime. 'Specially wot with seeing your fancy awesome thing and the beautiful curds that result.

[John@PC]

I need to make a curd cutter that works in a round pot better than a bread knife sometime

Andy (Awakephd) has that one covered and I'm sure you two could work out a cheese-for-cutter swap.  I did a press-for-cutter swap with Andy and feel bad because the only time I used his beautiful cutter I had a bad culture and curds were way soft.   I've just gotten so used to rectangular pans it's hard for me to go back to round (kind of like your rectangular pressed cheeses ).

[shaneb]

It looks great John. I wish I could cut my curds as well as that. My vertical cuts are fine, but my horizontal cuts are terrible. Have a cheese from me.

Shane

[Stinky]

I made a Double Gloucester with Adjunct Thermo to speed things up today, and whipped together one of the wire-dowel mechanisms. I got much nicer curd than normal. I did do it a bit slowly, though, so some of it had re-knitted a little bit. And maybe jiggle for longer. I'm guessing a lot of the shattering is mostly from using poor quality milk, though.