Best hoops and mold/yeast strains for first mold-ripened cheese?

[WisconsinDan]

I recently had an oozy goat brie that I bought at a store. It has inspired me to try my hand at my own mold-ripened cheese, but there just seems to be such a variety of shapes and sizes when it comes to these furry beauties that I am not exactly sure where to start.  Not to mention the wide variety of molds and yeasts.  I figured before I go and spend a bunch of money on stuff it might be wise to ask opinions on what might be the easiest stuff to start with for someone who has never made a furry feast rather than go and buy a bunch of stuff on impulse again only to find half of it useful?

[jmason]

They, in my experience, are really not that hard to make.  The best price on camembert molds is from artisangeek.com and the owner is a member of this forum, that said I made my own molds and they work quite well for me.  I am using P candidum-neige and like it, together with a morge made from the rind of a store bought brie.  The neige is added to the make and the morge I spray on. This has worked quite well for me and I did it really just to get geo into the party.  The opinions of other members is probably slanted towards geo 15 and PC-ABL.  I see from another of your makes that you have ARN.  The ARN and a P candidum would certainly be another option and one I want to try, Yoev (iratherfly), the owner of artisangeek likes it, and FRANCOIS another member here feels it is a bit yeasty to his tastes so it probably comes down to personal taste.  Ozziecheese seems to be the go to guy for this type of cheese on this board so reading some of his posts is probably a good idea, although I haven't had good luck adding ultra-pasturized cream to mine and it's the only cream I can easily find.  My cams without added cream have been wonderful so the cream isn't required by any means.  I found the video on making camembert from promisedland farm on YouTube really helpful for my first make. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU-6eHMDk28

You coould certainly start with the ARN and a morge made from a store bought brie or camembert that you like, or for that matter just the morge itself.  Basically smash op a bit of the rind with a sterilized fork in water to which you have added a small amount of salt and sugar and let it incubate for 16 hours in the fridge before use, it can be stored for a while, I think I have done 2 weeks, in the fridge.  Spray on the cheese after the salt rub has had a chance to soak into the cheese (a few hours).  Hope this was helpful, have fun.

John

BTW- I have found that the 4 for 2 dollar green topped food containers from walmart make great little minicaves for these things with the addition of a mat cut to fit the container, I use the plastic embroidery mesh.  I don't seal the lids on them and they get turned daily until they go into the fridge, every other day after that.  The containers and mesh get sanitized by a 30-60 second dip in almost boiling water.

[WisconsinDan]

Thanks for the tip on the website. There was so much stuff I had never even seen before on the website and I it was really hard to not spend so much I could not afford any milk. I am waiting for some of the camembert molds and am thinking I will try using the ARN with some P candidum as you suggested, but just for fun, and as an excuse to buy more, I also want to make a morge using that oozy goat brie I love.

Since the ARN has some B. Linens in the mix I wonder how this might affect things?

Also, how much of the rind from the goat brie might I want to use to make the morge? If I am going to make  2 of these cheeses, 4.5" diameter, from 2 gallons of milk, how much water, salt and sugar will I need to make enough of the solution?

[jmason]

If you make 2 of them your form factor will be too thick for a cam.  I get 4 average size cams from a 2 gallon batch.  Re; your morge question I use a piece of rind about 3/4-1" square in 6 oz of water/salt/sugar mix( I think I used about 1/4 tsp of each maybe a bit less) and I did 2 batches of camembert and 1 nuefchatel with it, poured it out because it was getting old there was enough to do a few more batches.  The linens probably won't have enough time to really do much, and the geo and candidum are very aggressive so the flavor/smell contribution would be minimal imo.   I would steer clear of adding extra cream until you are comfortable with the process, trust me if it comes out good it will blow the socks off store bought even without the extra cream.  If you are using floculation time to time your cut, go with a 5-6x time factor/multiplier.  Have fun and enjoy.

John

[WisconsinDan]

Hmmm... I know I have read somewhere about how the height to width ratio makes a difference with the fuzzy ones, but I do not really know too much about that just yet.  I really liked the movie and appreciate the rough guidelines for the morge as well.  It is sounding like for the two 4.5" molds I may only want to make 1 gallon then once I get everything, this is really a bad hobby for me because I hate waiting, but for a 1 gallon batch how much of this morge would I use? Would I put it in with my cultures or do I wash my cheeses with it? I am not quite sure what to do with it here?

A cheese for you John for all of your input here. I cannot wait to get everything and get it all started. Definitely going to post the pics when I do.

[jmason]

Yoev suggests, and I trust him implicitly, that when using a morge from a commercial cheese (as opposed to making one from a dvi culture) that it is safest to spray or wash on the outside.  Since camemberts and bries ripen from the outside in it doesn't present any problem.  I use a small spray bottle that is exclusively for that morge, dollar store find. woot woot.  So really the amount is pretty irrelevent.  Just remember to let it culture in the salt/sugar water for at least 16 hours before use.  that way if you get any contamination it can be dealt with by the salt vinegar solution wipe.

John

The form factor is important with this cheese so that the ripening can reach the center before the paste under the rind becomes completely liquid.  Some white mold cheeses have a different form factor, such as valencay, but as far as I know those are all lactic coagulated cheeses and behave much differently.  I will probably do a nuefchatel in the future and I recommend this cheese, when properly ripened they are wonderful, like a camembert but something is different and I just fell in love with them.

[WisconsinDan]

So I sort of cobbled together a recipe from that video and the recipe here: http://www.cheesemaking.com/Camembert.html and substituted the ARN for the GEO. The make has gone roughly like this (sorry but my pH meter seemed a bit out of whack even after recalibration so there will be no pH data):

1 gallon whole milk
0.2 g Flora Danica
0.1 g PC-ABL
1 skewer tip of ARN
0.3 mL double strength rennet
1/4 tsp CaCl
And I am going to shoot for roughly 2% salt by weight

Warm milk to 84F
Add cultures
Ripen 35 minutes
Add CaCl
Add rennet
  Had a flocculation time of 14 minutes
Cut into 3/4" cubes
Drained in bag for 20 minutes
The curds ended up filling 1 4.5"x4.5" mould.

I will post more pics as I go.

[WisconsinDan]

I now see that even though you can fit all of the curds from 1 gallon of milk into a 4.5"x4.5" hoop I should still have put them into 2 hoops. It drained down to just under 2" and from some of the other posts on here I am realizing this is about twice as tall as it needs to be to ripen correctly. I also see that other people seem to have had some success with cutting them in half in such cases (although I do not remember seeing any pictures of the resulting cheeses), so I am giving it a try and will post pictures as things progress. When all is said and done if they don't turn out great I will chalk it up to the learning curve. I also started another batch today with a couple of differences and am going to start another thread comparing how both batches go.