Cheese Infused with a Smoked IPA

[nccheesemike]

Hello fellow Cheeseheads! I wanted to share another cheese that I made last Saturday Jan 28th. This cheese has my homebrewed Smoked IPA beer added right before pressing. I hope the smokey character will carry over into the cheese. It's air dried and I may attempt to wax but it'll be in the cave soon.  I'll age this one for ~3 months. Happy Cheesemaking all!!

Mike

[Al Lewis]

Very nice indeed Mike.  Did you find when you brewed your smoked IPA that it lost a lot of it's smokey aroma in the finished product?  I did a couple of cases of a double IPA where I smoked the grain prior to brewing.  The aroma was great but little of it carried over into the finished product.  It's definitely there but nowhere near what it was.

[awakephd]

Mike, AC4U!

[nccheesemike]

Very nice indeed Mike.  Did you find when you brewed your smoked IPA that it lost a lot of it's smokey aroma in the finished product?  I did a couple of cases of a double IPA where I smoked the grain prior to brewing.  The aroma was great but little of it carried over into the finished product.  It's definitely there but nowhere near what it was.

Hi Al! Thank you very much! While often times beer loses some of that initial character like bitterness from hops I found that this IPA's smoke character has increased since I made the beer back in December. When I smoke meats (pork, chicken) the smoke character is always greater the next day or two days after. The beer seems to have followed that path too. I home smoked the malt using Cherrywood then brewed the beer. I will be very interested to see how it carries over into the cheese, I added no other ingredients except the beer to the curds before pressing. You can expect follow up posts on the results.

Thank you Andy!!

[nccheesemike]

Went ahead and decided to wax this cheese instead of vacuum bagging. Say a prayer to the Cheese Gods for me as my previous waxed jobs stunk. I used more wax in the pot today and got half Cheese coverage on each dip.  Double dipped this cheese to coat as well.

[Al Lewis]

Looks good!  AC4U!

[AnnieA]

Your beer infused cheese looks beautiful after pressing. I just made a large batch of the same cheese using a polish style porter. Something I did to ease my mind since I'm aging 4 wheels at the same time is I used a microbial soft wax first before the harder cheese wax. I had a few dents in the outer side of my wheels that I knew would be a breeding ground for internal molding.  I thought for this scenario I'd better play it safe than be sorry after the affinage process. (Crossing fingers). I hand painted my wax this time due to the dents and wanted to make sure I covered EVERYTHING! Dipping sometimes leaves pock holes that don't get a full wax coverage.  This is always an exciting cheese to try after adding,  as the flavors are never the same due to the beers used. The porter I used had a lovely distinctive caramel back flavor that I'm excited to try in the end.  I'm in great hopes your cheese has gone well.

[nccheesemike]

My second beer cheese update. Aged for 3 months. This might be my favorite cheese. Very moist and flavorful. Has a beer character in the taste. Slight smoke character as well.  Half the 2 lb wheel is gone but I plan to make more beer cheeses. Cheers cheese nerds

Mike

[DoctorCheese]

What recipe did you use?

I plan on doing a beer infused chipotle jack sometime soon... its been in the works for a while in my head, so don't try and say I copied you 

[nccheesemike]

What recipe did you use?

I plan on doing a beer infused chipotle jack sometime soon... its been in the works for a while in my head, so don't try and say I copied you 

I look forward to seeing how yours turns out. Here is a link to the recipe I followed

https://www.cheesemaking.com/beerchs.html