Boofer..
The short ripening time did come from experimentation.
There was one recipe on the internet that called for adding rennet at the same time as the culture and others varied widely.
I figured that since my cheese always had a crumbly texture that I was producing too much acid. I then began to play around with the ripening times to see if I could figure out where I needed to be.
Although this is the first year that I've tried making my own recipe I've been playing with this aspect of the recipe for a while. Knowing, (guessing), that acid was my problem I just kept shortening the ripening time from one batch to the next. I honestly can't say that I saw much improvement but I also was not keeping an eye on Ph readings throughout the make since I just purchased a meter last year. Once I did start using my meter during the entire make I feel that the quality of the cheese has improved drastically.
Mainly I look for any drop in my Ph reading. The recipe says a total of 10 minutes ripening but as long as I see a drop I know I'm good to go. This does almost always occur at the 10 minute mark but I'm not saying that this is a time period that has to be followed exactly.
Debi.....
I do use a wire to cut my cheeses. I purchased a simple cheese slicer at our local Wal Mart store for something like $10.00. It is setup to cut a 1/4 inch slice but I sometimes will "freehand" the cut if I want a slice to be thinner. In this case I wanted to show the elasticity of the cheese, so I cut it as thin as possible.
Chee....
I've honestly never been satisfied with my Gouda no matter how long I aged them. Some of them had a nice flavor but none had the texture of the Gouda I've purchased in the store. I honestly had given over to the thought that it was impossible for a home cheese maker to produce the texture that is found in store bought cheese.
Well thanks to information found on this forum, (concerning what happens within a cheese, i.e. the science behind the make) I started to re-think everything about making cheese. I'm far from an expert but I do feel that I'm on my way to making some really nice cheese in the future.
What really gets me about this is that I don't know if my family and friends will like the type of Gouda that I'm producing now.
I know my dad always said that he didn't really care for commercial Gouda and thought mine was much better. Well I really expect this cheese to turn into something that is very close to a commercial example so my dad might not care for it.
Regardless, my goal has always been to produce commercial quality cheese in the home setting and I now feel that I'm getting close to accomplishing this.
I guess I can always make an old style batch for my dad, once in awhile, if he begins to complain.
Dave
