Petit Tomme experiment... Creative ideas or comments anyone?

[iratherfly]

Day 20 update... this is about half way through this cheese which I plan to age 45 days. Slight orangy yellow is beginning to show and the smell is much more pronounced and mature, It's like an aged cheddar with the horse-dunginess of Crottin Chavingol...
I did follow LinuxBoy's advice to reduce humidity (removed the cover partially) to inhibit the speed of Geo growth and it worked, but it gave me the side effect of tiny cracks on the rind which are usually a sign that it's drying too quickly (correct me if I am wrong). Guess I have to find the balance. I will raise humidity based on Francois advice that the Geo strain will eventually die and the B.Linen will survive. I have been smearing and wiping it once a day with slightly-salted PLA water which I take out of the fridge to room temp first. - photos below. (behind it is the new Goat's version which is drying now from brine). Comments?

[Alex]

To moderate the drying you may cover the cheese with a moist handkerchief/cloth.

[iratherfly]

I would. This cheese was done fairly moist and simply putting the cover on the aging box will give me droplets on the lid. I partially removed the lid to help the B.Linen and arrest the Geo slightly. It worked but gave me cracks so I put it back on... According to Francois the Geo will eventually just die of and the B.Linen will take over anyway so no need to rash this balance of forces. I will just wait...

[Brie]

Looks good to me, irather, can't wait to hear about your adventures in Paris! Are you taking your cheese with you?

[iratherfly]

I know, it's a bit ridiculous to bring cheese to France but I am meeting my parents there (they lived there 6 years so they know their way around). I think it's also time to break the news on this forum that one of my original cheeses will be produced on a test run and sale by a goats' cheesemaker in Bordeaux later this year. I am working on teaching him my technique now and perfecting it together. Like I said, ridiculous!!
I love these community-generated cheeses we do here. One person experiment for the whole group. I will post more of these in the future.

[mtncheesemaker]

Good for you! Congratulations!
What kind of cheese type is it? How long did it take you to develop it?
Best of luck with it!
Pam

[iratherfly]

I was thinking of opening a thread for it. It's a real hybrid; Camembert technique, Goat's milk, Lipase which gives it crazy italian sharpness and ash, in a tiny 3"x1.5" wheel. I have been developing it since Decemner with overlapping batches. A long way for a guy who couldn't get a brie right just a few months ago... It takes 21 days to age. The idea is to get beautiful delicious rind and ash streak, lactic gooeyness right under the skin and texture that becomes flaky like a crottin towards the center. The flavor is sharp. We are working on this together at this point and currently focusing on techniques that give it a longer ripe period before it goes "affine" and downhill - turns into liquidy ammonia (for example we make it drier and smaller curd in the start and mature it a few more days, then we brine it heavy and it kills most of the geo). I am just having fun; not quitting my day job quite yet
Here's a photo of a batch from 2 month ago. We since have thinned out the rind and changed the shape of the ash streak inside to an arc which I haven't seen on other cheeses - perhaps it would give it some trademark look?

[FRANCOIS]

Thanks! So now that I am doing the second one in goats milk (in the press right now) perhaps I should try one of these methods!
This time around I used twice the PLA but no Geo (PLA has Geo in it, from the growth on the first cheese I figured it was more than plenty).

So do you dunk it for the first few days and then just leave it alone? (occasional cleaning, turning and box wiping, I assume). What do you dunk it in exactly and how long?
I submerge the cheeses for a few seconds then rub the soaked surface by hand for a few seconds and make sure the cheese is dripping wet
Silly me, I am flying to France in one week and I didn't think of this whole cheese rinding situation. I won't be here between days 7 and 15 of this cheese's life to take care of it - so maybe your "leave it alone" method would work for me.

What's the temp/RH you recommend? And is there any preference between using 18% or 23% brine to better help one favorite bacteria grow faster than another?
55 and as wet as you can get it will get your b.linens going well.  I normally use saturated brine for everything but washes.  I don't think they have much of an effect (18 vs 23) on small cheeses really.

[mtncheesemaker]

Your cheese looks gorgeous. Let me know if I can be part of a focus group!

[iratherfly]

Francois - THANKS!!! Always helpful. Will follow through.

Pam - Sure thing... I was going to see about sending it to people here. Where are you located?

I apologize in advance if I am unable to answer quickly in the coming week. Going out of town for 2 days and then a day back, then a week in Paris, stuffing myself with cheese.

[MarkShelton]

Whoa! Sending it out to forum members? With announcements like that you're gonna be doing a lot of mailing!

BTW I'll take 2...

[iratherfly]

Well... it's been a long time people! Yes, I was suppose to go back 2 weeks ago but because of that volcano in Iceland my flight was canceled and I got delayed in Paris for another week. Poor me. I did worry about these cheeses in my cave n NYC growing wild and when I came back in Saturday I was pleasantly surprised to find that the new goat's version was a bit wild but the B.Linen came out without any washing at all (wow, inoculating it into the milk really worked!). I brushed it with bacterial rind and it looks great.

The cows' version with which I started this thread last month was ready to open. It smelled lovely. The B.Linen was more yellow than orange and it wasn't too stinky, yet slightly grassy. It came out a bit drier than I anticipated and more flaky than desired (but now I know that this relates to the inoculation time, I will make this go away on the next batch). It is firm with small random eyes (likely do to the MD89) and thin yellow rind (the body is slightly harder/darker under the rind)

The taste is gorgeous; A mild aroma of B.Linen and gaminess to go with it. It's nutty with a slight flat sourness (typical for young cheese) and it then finishes in your mouth with a surprise of butterness (I think this is a Flora Danica). It also passed the melt test with flying colors.  I think that this same cheese with slightly shorter flocculation time would be perfect! Here are the photos:

[Brie]

Looks delicious, IRF, how did your cheese do in the competition?

[iratherfly]

Thanks Brie! This wasn't in any competition. It waited for me in NY while I was in France. The other cheese isn't in a competition either - My French cheesemaker friends have a working cheese farm in Bordeaux with certified facilities and 400 goats. They want to test-produce the other cheese.

[iratherfly]

And now... I am gearing up to the next step of improving this. While I have the goats' version of this aging with 2 more weeks to go, I just finished another cows' batch where I am attempting to use some Roblechon techniques to reach the same flavor and aroma profile but with much softer and moister texture:

• Heated milk to 85F (Instead of 88-89)
• Mesophilic and PLA inoculated only 15 minutes before Cal-Cl/rennet
• Curd clean break and cut at only 35 minutes
• Used whisk to cut the curd to pea-size instead of larger cubes with curd knife
• Cooked curd to 98F for 30 Min, stirring and resting occasionally (was suppose to be 95F in 30 min but I way overshot it to 98F in 10 min. Grrr...)
• Ladeled curd into the mold without cheesecloth, without hot whey wash and not under the whey's weight. It matted very well and I flipped it with no pressure 4 times in the next 2.5 hours
• Pressed at 5Lbs for 12 hours and then brined at 18% for 8 hours.
• Reipening in a container at 60F and 85-90% RH without drying it for 2-3 days outside

Does anyone here have an opinion about my new Roblechon hybrid concept? (I'll post photos if there is something interesting to see)