San Miguel

[waltweissman]

No, this is a washed curd cheese, but it uses a very light brine for the washing instead of plain water.  Then you press it.
Then after pressing you a regular saturated brine for the brining at 2 1/2 hours per pound
Does that make sense.
I'm super excited you want to make it and I'm really curious to see how it will turn out for you.

Thanks, makes perfect sense. But I want to make sure when to do the "washing".  In your recipe you had:

Rest 15 min
While resting heat 2 1/2 gallon of water to 86 F and add 1 Tablespoon of salt to it.
After rest, Remove 2 1/2 gallon of whey

Do you replace the 2 1/2 gallons of whey that you poured off with the light brine at that time just after removing the whey?

walt

[GortKlaatu]

Yes that's right.
I see the confusion...I forgot to put that in the recipe....just assumed people would know it since it was a washed curd cheese.  My bad.
I've corrected that in the recipe.
Thanks for pointing that out to me.


Are you making it?

[GortKlaatu]

Scarlettbri12
Sorry for the delay in answering....but working on several construction projects around here. 


You asked about the salt...it further delays acid development.

[waltweissman]

Yes that's right.
I see the confusion...I forgot to put that in the recipe....just assumed people would know it since it was a washed curd cheese.  My bad.
I've corrected that in the recipe.
Thanks for pointing that out to me.


Are you making it?

First, thanks for updating the recipe!  And yes, I will make this cheese; it just looks too good to ignore.  Plus I am a nut case for aged goat cheese.  I am traveling, mostly international, so I will not get to this until March.  But this will be my next cheese.  I can do a washed rind, the problem i have is that I don't have the established beautiful "life force" that you have in your cave.  Do you think i should just continue to wash, or rub or do so with B linens?

[GortKlaatu]

I never washed this one....and I didn't brush it down....I just let the natural rind develop. So there wasn't much B linens going on there.
You can do a washed/smear rind if you want to, but it would be a different cheese. (Which is totally cool, too.)


Do you have any mycodore and/or mycoderm?  You could add a pinch of that to the milk when you add the ripening cultures. You could even add just the tiniest pinch of P candidum and Geotrichum.  All that stuff (plus more) is all loose in my cave so it just grows, but you could add a bit to "kick start" things.  Since this is a semi-hard cheese, you don't have to worry that it would turn into a bloomy rind--between the lower moisture content of the cheese and the lower ambient humidity, that wouldn't happen.  But you would get some growth as well as create a more hospitable environment for other naturally occurring yeasts/mold/etc.