So, since I made a dissertation cheddar, I thought as a way to ring in my new postdoc to make a Postdoc Parmesan. Since my postdoc is for two years, I'll age this guy for two years and then share it with my coworkers when I leave. I followed Caldwell's book on this one. It was a little interesting, since I had to make my own thermophillic blend. But so far it looks like everything is okay.
Starting with local milk. They have a buy 10 gallons get one free so I forsee myself buying a lot of milk here especially as I'm making my longer aged cheeses.
Finally got my tray for my setup. I can put in up to five gallons of milk at a time which is nice. The sous vide setup has been swell so far. The only problem is that sometimes it's slow to heat the milk up to a certain temperature over a period of time. I might have to supplement the sous vide heater with some hot water. But we'll see.
Cutting curds.
In the press
Briny Depths
About to go on the shelf to airdry
I'm happy with this cheese; things went very smoothly in the making process. I was a little worried about the sous vide heating. It as heating a bit slow so before draining the curds the pH was a little lower than I'd like (6.31 instead of 6.4). However after pressing and before brining, the pH was right on target with Caldwell's recipe. It could also be because I added lipase for a little bit of that taste, but we'll see how it all went in two years!
