Author Topic: My first pepper jack!  (Read 2043 times)

Frumunda

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My first pepper jack!
« on: May 12, 2009, 08:25:48 PM »
Well,I got my calcium chloride in laste week,and Sunday,I made some pepper jack cheese!I got much better results this time! :D

Here's how it went down....

Since I was making pepper jack,I needed peppers,of course!So,after reading another thread here about how to make sure that the pepper taste permeated though out the cheese,I diced a jalapeno pepper and cut up 3 dried japanese red chili peppers and bolied them in about a 1/2 cup of water,drained them and added the juice to the milk.As you can see,the water is green,there's definately pepper juice in there!



When the milk was at 88 degrees,I set it aside to ripen with the Calcium chloride for 45 mins.



Then it was back to the double boiler to raise the temp to 90 degrees.



Then it was time to add my rennet!I also put some liquid smoke in there to get a good smokey pepper jack flavor!



Then it was time to let the curds set,I monitored the temperature every 5 minutes to make sure it stayed at 90 and didn't go over or under.You can see the curds are gonna be great because the spot I took my readings left a perfectly clean hole in the middle of the curds!



Clean break!



Then I cut the curds with my new cake icing knife I bought this weekend,it worked great!It's hard to see in this pic,but the curds are cut.



Talk about beautiful curds!I couldn't believe what a difference a tiny amount of calcium chloride made! :D



I was so impressed,I had to take another picture! ;D









Frumunda

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2009, 08:33:24 PM »
Here's the curds in the sink draining.



Here's me mixing in the peppers.I forgot to mention,I learned a lesson the hard way!Never touch your face after cutting up fresh peppers!My eyes were burning so badly,I had to take a time out to let them clear before I could start my cheese,that's why I'm wearing latex gloves this time!



Same cruddy ol press,but I got me some good weights so I knew exactly how much weight was on the press!



Here's the cheese fresh from the press,standing tall and wieghing in at 1 lb 10 3/4 oz! :D



Of course it's a bit squattier and lost a couple of ounces from the whey that has since drained out of it.I'd call this go round a smashing success!I can't wait til it's aged so I can taste it! :D

Frumunda

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2009, 12:33:10 AM »
Here's what it looked like today.It's lost about 5 ozs from draining whey.Really starting to bulge around the middle!I guess cheese is the only thing that can lose weight and get fatter! ;D


Rich

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2009, 01:00:59 AM »
Nice looking cheese.  Its settled some, hence the bulging sides.  My Jacks have always been drier than I would like.  Hope you have a great cheese.  I'd suggest making bigger cheeses.  Its a shame to go through all the time and effort and end up with less than 2# of cheese.

Offline DeejayDebi

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2009, 01:16:04 AM »
Looking real good RR! Congrats!

Frumunda

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2009, 01:16:59 AM »
  I'd suggest making bigger cheeses.  Its a shame to go through all the time and effort and end up with less than 2# of cheese.

Yes it is,but I just strated this and I'm just getting the hang of it,and I don't have big enough pots make bigger cheeses right now,so til I get some cheeses under my belt and some bigger pots I'm stuck with small cheeses for now.

Frumunda

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2009, 01:18:06 AM »
Looking real good RR! Congrats!

Thanks!It looks right and smells right,can't wait til it's aged enought to eat! ;D

Offline Cartierusm

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2009, 01:50:46 AM »
Kind of funny lookin'  ;D, but I'd say a successful cheese. Let us know how it turns out.

P.S. Did you press it with cheese cloth? If not you might want to try that so the curds doesn't come out of your mold's weep holes. The cheese cloth helps a ton with wicking away mositure and will help the curds to form a nice shape. Right now the curd is being pushed out the weep holes plugging it so excess whey can't escape.

Frumunda

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Re: My first pepper jack!
« Reply #8 on: May 27, 2009, 12:50:02 AM »
I make the first pressing with cheese cloth,then I take the cheese cloth off for the second pressing so as to flatten out the end the cheese cloth was all bunched up on.