Chimay Cheese

[mikekchar]

I randomly noticed somewhere that Chimay cheese is sold after only 3 weeks of ageing and since I can actually get Chimay beer in the store, I thought I'd take a break from the Tommes and make one (which will give me just enough time to make and eat it before going to the UK).  I figure I'll just to a Port Salut recipe and then wash with the beer.

A couple of questions: what kind of beer/salt/water ratio should the wash be?

I can't do a traditional 2kg, 23 cm wheel.  My only mould is exactly half that size (11.5 cm).  I noticed that Chimay does a 1kg wheel for their Le Poteaupre which seems to have similar height as the 2kg wheel, which I estimate is 4.8 cm.  They do a small format for the Grand Chimay and if that is also 4.8 cm, then the mould size would be about ~9 cm -- which looks about right in the pictures...

Here is a shot of the real thing (not my cheese!):



So I think I'm safe in choosing to do the same in my mould size, but in general, is it useful to try to have a specific height/width ration, or is total height the most important thing?  I've heard the former, but somehow the latter makes more sense to me as long as we're talking about cheese that is shorter than it is wide...

Edit: In the end I decided *not* to do a Chimay cheese partly because I could not get any Chimay.  I decided instead for a local craft Belgian Wit, which will be totally different, but I think still good.  Also, I wasn't too happy with the few Port Salut/Oka recipes I could find and decided instead to go with a slightly modified version of iratherfly's reblochon recipe.  One reason was that I didn't want to do a washed curd :-)  I'm eating it young anyway, so I think it's fine if the pH crashes a bit.

Anyway, it's in the mould now.  I did the first flip (with no weight) and the rind is already completely closed, so I think I didn't quite cut the curds small enough :-)  We'll see how it goes.  I figure it's pretty hard to ruin a cheese you're going to eat only 3 weeks later...  Pics when there is something interesting to see.

Edit 2: Umm... 660 grams... Ummm... I didn't really count on that.  It gets to drain overnight, but I don't think any of my boxes are big enough for it.  I hope it drains a bit.  What kind of yield do you usually get from this kind of cheese?  I'm a bit afraid it's going to be a bit of a sloppy mess.  Oh well, it's all good!  If I do this recipe again, I will definitely use only 3 liters of milk for my mould.

Edit 3: I should have looked at the recipe more closely.  At the top end of the yield you might get 5 lbs for 4 gallons, which would be about a yield of 565g for 4 liters.  After draining and ageing I won't be that far off that.  On the plus side apparently a reblochon mould is 13.5cm and typical height is 6 cm, so I'll have similar proportions....  If only I can find a maturation box that will work *and* fit in my tiny cave...

[mikekchar]

Here it is after 4 days:



Been having some trouble.  It's weeping whey like there is no tomorrow.  It's down to 590 grams, so it lost 70 grams since I unmoulded!  I'm a bit worried that it will end up being under salted.  I can just *barely* fit the cheese in my maturation box.  It has pretty much stopped slumping now and is fairly firm.  Today it started getting the geo slime and I noticed a few spots of blue and geo blooming, so gave it a wash of 6% salt with a craft belgian style wit ale (the brine is surprisingly delicious).  The cheese is still quite wet so I dried if off a bit before I washed it.

Next time I would be more careful to cut the curds smaller.  I used iratherfly's reblochon recipe (because I couldn't be bothered to do a curd wash), but instead of stirring with a whisk, I decided just to continue cutting the curds after the first 5 minute rest.  I think that was a mistake because you only have 15 minutes of cooking and you need pretty small curds, I think.  Still, I'm fairly optimistic.  We'll see what happens.

I have to go to my mother in law's house for a couple of days and I don't think I can get my "cave" down to 10C for that time, so I'm putting it in the normal fridge.  I've got a section that fluctuates between 6 and 7, so I think it will be OK for the 2 nights it will be in there.  In my experience, putting the cheese in the fridge doesn't do much harm -- it just slows things down for a bit.

[awakephd]

Mike, looking forward to the taste test. I agree with your assessment of the cold fridge - haven't needed it often, but I've used that technique successfully in the past.

[mikekchar]

Bit of an update: My lack of experience is showing :-)  After the first wash I left it 2 days without flipping as per the instructions, but by that time it got some blue mould.  I decided not to worry about it even though I couldn't easily wash it all off -- I left some since in the past it tends to die pretty quickly after I do a wash.  And this time, it pretty much did the same -- at least it didn't spread.

I did 3 washes in the first week as per the instructions... but... I think I was a bit too conservative with my washing because today I realised that it was mostly covered by slime.  Not just a little slime, but several mm thick.  I scraped off a fair bit with my handy, dandy tooth pick (just using the side) and then did a much more vigourous wash.  Indeed, there was cheese under there somewhere.  I've got it drying off in the fridge just a bit so that it's not quite so humid in the maturation box (I'm sure I'm pushing close to 100% lately).  Whether or not I get a nice washed rind in the end is still up in the air, but I'm pretty sure I will have cheese ;-)  At least the blue is completely gone now.

[AnnDee]

If you don’t want blue then you need geo. The slime is geo which in time will turn either powdery like or mould like.

[mikekchar]

Interesting.  I thought that might be the case.  But in a trappist cheese aren't I trying to cultivate b.linens?

[AnnDee]

Blinens is a different story, if you keep the surface moist and RH on the high side, sooner or later blinens will come.
Geo and blue on the other hand, have the same source of food. The difference is, geo eat faster but does not like salt. So if you do not want blue on your soft cheese or washed rind, you can delay salting and let geo have a head start. And for washed rind, use a weaker brine.

[mikekchar]

Ah.  Thank you!  That makes a lot of sense.  For me this is the trickiest part of cheesemaking!

[mikekchar]

I'm finally getting a good smear going now :-)  Unfortunately, I can only really age it for another week before I have to eat it.  But I was looking for a young washed rind anyway.

Thank you again, AnnDee, for your message.  I did some more research and I think I can kind of piece together where I went wrong.  As I said, I had to go out of town for a couple of days early on and put the cheese in my regular fridge (my "cave" is just a picnic cooler that I add ice to occasionally!)  When I came back, the cheese was *really* slimely and after a day or two I decided it was a good time for the first wash.  However, iratherfly's instructions say to wait until the Geo blooms.  I should have done that.

B. linens needs a pH of 5.7 or higher, which was a crucial piece of information I was missing.  By letting the Geo bloom before the first wash, you are allowing the pH to rise *before* adding more salt.  To add insult to injury, iratherfly's instructions say to add a bit of salt to the rind when doing the first wash in order to scratch the rind a bit (makes it inhospitable to other moulds and thickens the rind a bit, apparently).  I forgot to do that with the wash.  I was also worried about the low dry salt level in the recipe, so I essentially dry salted it again a day or two later, with a small amount of salt.  So basically, I slowed down the Geo *again* and this is probably why I got the blue mould going on in there.

I don't think it's a massive worry, but I probably set back the cheese about 2 weeks with my fumbling around.  What I found was that presumably once the salt was absorbed by the cheese, the geo bloomed every day or so and I could wash it once it got going a bit.  At one point, I could see the smear forming and instead of washing, I smeared it, which happily knocked off the geo.  Now it's wonderfully stinky and turning a nice orange colour.

It's somewhat frustrating that I need to go away for a month (and then I'll be travelling *inside* the country for a week or so :-( ).  But I'm very keen to give this a try again when I get back.  I think I'm slowly starting to get a bit more control in the cave.  It really is fascinating!  I wonder if there is any resource that describes affinage in detail.  I imagine most commercial operations focus on one or two types of cheeses and just nail down their process for those cheeses.

[AnnDee]

Happy to share whatever I picked up here and there. Sometimes the knowledge from a class room cannot always be applied rigidly but we can make adjustment. I have not found a commercial book on affinage as yet, but I hope to take affinage course in academy mons in September. Then maybe I will get more answer