Independance Cheddar

[OzzieCheese]

In honour of the 4th my Monthly Cheddar is dedicated to those who wrestled freedom and liberty for themselves, ending the tyranny from the British.  I read the Declaration of Independence and was appalled at the degradation and lack of ability to self-govern that the British imposed. Time for Australia to do like wise !!  Maybe ANZAC Day should be our defining struggle as it certainly defined us as a Nation.

Hope you all who observed this date, especially our U.S brethren, had a great Holiday and safe celebration.

Today is Cheddar day my 12 months of Cheddar are somewhat hit and miss and unfortunately this one is more miss than hit.

There were several things that went wrong.  It's not a failure, but it won't be a 12 month classic Cheddar.


 

[OzzieCheese]

The day started ok, until I had a long interruption and the milk stayed at about 32 - 33 DegC for almost 2 hours.  No culture add at that stage but I feel the pH was affected.
It Was a Standard 10 Litre cheese, I'll post the control sheet shortly, but the texturing stage was a little weird as the curd mass didn't really get as firm as it normally does.  And the other thing that went wrong was the pressing.  I managed to somehow get a really fast drop in pH and had to mill and salt early.  And, after setting the press for the evening @ 70Kg (7kg with a MA of 10), work this morning to find the 5 kg bottle sitting on the press base, so obviously not a full press during the night.

And to top it all off I couldn't get the normal milk.  so it was 10 Litres of the lower fat 4real Milk and 300 ml of Maleny 45% cream to boost it a little.


 

[OzzieCheese]

The cook went well and I'm changing the Photo shooting position to try and show an little more detail.

[OzzieCheese]

The texturing stage.  I got to some of the way but the pH dropped too quickly to get the nice 'Chicken Breast' texture I was after.  It wasn't bad, just not as firm as it usually is.

[John@PC]

Nice work Mal.  AIDC4U (An Independence Day Cheese for your) .

[OzzieCheese]

I'm reasonably happy with the cheese as it is drying, there are several small cracks already and I put that down to not enough pressure for most of the night.  This will need to be vac packed instead of my usual Cloth bandage. I will still take it out 6 months or so but I'll not be too disappointed if the flavour is not quiet there - It is Artisan cheese after all.

-- Mal