Tested my Stichelton/Stilton 10 weeks after make, using my home-made cheese trier (an apple corer). It had blued evenly all the way from centre to edge. So cut it open to see if my experiment with 'corkscrew piercing method' had worked or not.
Yes, it had! Beautiful spider network of veins from centre to edge with no horizontal blue lines. I realise that appearance is only cosmetic, and the taste and texture are top priority, but the good visuals are a bonus for me.
In my experiment, I had pierced the bottom half of the cheese in the traditional way, and there were some lines of blue visible there. So in future I will use my somewhat time-consuming corkscrew method for piercing all the cheese.
MikeChar was spot-on in predicting that the initial open curd texture would probably result in natural random veins. He was correct - very fine green-blue veins in the centre to darker blue veins at the edges.
Now for the taste and texture: wonderful! The taste was like an excellent English Stilton, a typical 'blue' taste but with no trace of any sharp acidic finish (like you get in some commercial Danish blue cheeses). Had a good fragrance also when cut. The texture was quite firm and sliced cleanly, but still a smooth and creamy mouthfeel. The only downside for me was that it had too much blue veining compared with the cream-colour paste. Also one or two pinky-orange spots in a piercing hole (Brevibacterium linens?) Maybe I should have stopped the ripening earlier than 10 weeks, for a small cheese made from 16 litres raw milk.
I took photos of it, but cannot seem to find a way of attaching jpg files to my postings (suggestions welcome).
Anyway all portioned, and vacuum packed ready for Christmas 2023.
Happy Christmas to all cheesemakers.