GordGouda - Raw milk washed curd cheese

[DoctorCheese]

The original plan was to make a cheese using 3 gallons of raw milk. However, the farmer accidentally broke one of the half gallon jugs on the drive in to town! I ended up using 2.5 gallons of raw and 1 gallon of P&H to make this cheese.

The make went really well. It is very satisfying to work with raw milk because the curds are just so much stronger. I also decided to use a make form for the first time because I think this cheese will be really good and I would like to tweak the recipe in the future. If you have any questions about the make (because you can't read my writing) please feel free to ask. I followed most of the recipe for same temp wash curd out of the Caldwell book, but used MA4001 + Flora Danica as the cultures.

[awakephd]

Looks good - AC4U!

[DoctorCheese]

UPDATEI opened this cheese after 57 days of aging. There is quite a bit of eye formation from the flora danica I think. When I made this I used a time based recipe and the pH must have dropped quite a lot because this almost tastes like a cheddar! Very creamy and buttery, but with a sour punch that I would expect from a 2 yr old cheddar. I vacuum bagged 3/4 of the wheel for more aging and will share the other quarter with some guinea pigs at my next cheese event which is this weekend.

[5ittingduck]

Cool. My raw milk goudas have a similar interior appearance.
They also have a pretty robust flavour, so maybe a raw milk thing?

[awakephd]

Maybe, but I'd suspect that the pH got too low, especially if there is any crumbliness to the cheese. My first "Goudas" were disappointing for precisely this reason. Once I got a pH meter, I started getting the kind of texture and taste that I was expecting.

[DoctorCheese]

Maybe, but I'd suspect that the pH got too low, especially if there is any crumbliness to the cheese.

The texture is actually what I would expect from a Gouda. Very bendable and semi soft.

[John@PC]

Another cheese for you Jobe.  It's always interesting to try to figure out what you did to get to where you got.  Making a two month-old cheese morph into a 2 yr. old cheddar sounds like alchemy though - like the mercury to gold thing /

[awakephd]

Maybe, but I'd suspect that the pH got too low, especially if there is any crumbliness to the cheese.

The texture is actually what I would expect from a Gouda. Very bendable and semi soft.

That strongly suggests that you got the pH right!

[DoctorCheese]

That strongly suggests that you got the pH right!

Well, maybe the raw milk and two different culture blends I put in are just packing a lot of punch that makes it SEEM like its more acidic than it is. The flavor, as I said, is strong like an aged cheddar.

[botanist]

You may want to check out the post where linuxboy (Pav Cherny) comments on a culture combination like yours for Gouda and what would give a closer flavor profile to the 'real thing'
 Re: Midnight Moon Goat's Milk Gouda Style Cheese  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,524.msg59090.html#msg59090

"One, age it out for a year. Two, change your cultures. As I wrote, midnight moon is a DL culture with multiple undefined strains, and adjuncted with what tastes like helveticus, paracasei, rhamnosus, or a blend to me. MA4001 is a D type with specified strains, modified with TA for acidification. Wrong culture. Get a classic gouda culture where you have all four (again, DL type) and make sure it's undefined strains. Hansen's CHN 11 IIRC, FD, probat, etc can all be used. And then adjunct it with bacilli. Strain selection is absolutely crucial here. You can't use something like LH100. You have to use a strain specifically formulated to give you the flavor profile you want. All the houses have these strains. Ask your local shop what they recommend for a sweet and nutty profile. Something like Danisco's FLAV series tend to work. LBC81 is fine for faster paste development and bitterness control and some flavor development, but it is not like helveticus or specific acidophilus flavors. One of danico's proprietary FLAVs, for example, their acidilacti, produces a sweet note."

I personally like Kazu + Flav 54