Author Topic: Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder  (Read 558 times)

Richard

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Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder
« on: August 23, 2017, 07:22:09 AM »
Hi, My name is Richard and I live on Route 62 in South Africa - I am totally new to cheese making and the passion to make it followed my love to eat it! I did a cheese making course about 2 months ago and on the 4th August made my first cheese. I produced 4 wheels of Cheddar but I cannot get the rind to harden. It always feels damp and now I see the wheels are cracking. I tried vacuum packing the cheese after about a week but then noticed moisture so took them out the vac packs only to find the rind was quite wet. Any advice please

Offline FooKayaks2

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Re: Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder
« Reply #1 on: August 23, 2017, 11:03:32 AM »
Hi Richard,

Do you have any photos of the cheese? Where have you been aging the cheese? What temperature and humidity levels is your ageing space?

Mathew

Offline awakephd

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Re: Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2017, 01:47:26 PM »
We probably need to know more about the make process. My guess is that you may have left the curds too moist, or you may have trapped whey when you were pressing.

Meanwhile, welcome to the forum - this is a great place to work through the problems and find solutions!
-- Andy

Richard

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Re: Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2017, 10:54:34 AM »
Thanks for the reply - I am away on business - will send you pictures when I get home on Friday. I think I may of not pressed it hard enough

Offline awakephd

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Re: Non Hardening of the rind on a chedder
« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2017, 05:20:12 PM »
"Pressing hard enough" -- this is a bit tricky for beginners. (Ask me how I know ... !) The instinct is that if the cheese is too wet, I must need to press it more (with a higher weight). But pressing with too much weight too soon can close up the rind before all the whey has had a chance to trickle out, trapping it inside the cheese. In general, you want to press with just enough weight to keep a gentle trickle of whey flowing, and end up with only as much weight as needed to get a smoothly closed rind within the time frame needed. (Note that cheeses that are brined/salted after pressing generally need to be finished pressing by the time the pH reaches 5.3 or so - which may only take a couple of hours, or may take overnight, depending on the milk and culture(s) used, temperature, etc.)

So if pressing more is not the way to reduce moisture, what is? Several factors contribute: flocculation - how much rennet and how long the curd has been allowed to coagulate; cut size - cutting smaller results in drier curds; amount of stirring - more stirring reduces the moisture left in the curds; amount of cooking - cooking to higher temps and/or for longer will reduce the moisture left in the curds.

Part of what makes cheesemaking an art is juggling all of these variables, and more -- so that you reach the right pH at the right time with the right level of moisture in the curds. But that said, there is room for a good bit of variation that still leads to good cheese - maybe not quite the cheese type you intended to make, but still good. :)
-- Andy