'Jazzing Up' Basic Hard Cheese Making Recipes

[dttorun]

Sure!
I am doing a basic Tomme. (formula below)
I then dip it in Syrah wine for 6 hours. Dry it thoroughly for a day. Return it to the Syrah wine for another 6 hours. Dry it thoroughly for another day or two. Then, I vacuum pack it (using FoodSaver or similar machine). Age at 55F for 65 days. Turn occasionally (Few times a week in the beginning but eventually once every week or two). It's perfect for when you are away. Also this isn't sensitive to humidity because it's in vacuum. No box cleaning, no wiping, no rind washing, no brushing, no salt rubbing... you get the idea. Real strong cheese with truly easy hands-off aging process.

Note about the wine:
I do add a few drops of CalCl to the wine and lots of salt so that it wouldn't deplete the cheese of its own CalCl and the salt (which I just brined into it!) Otherwise the cheese structure will weaken and the rind you just built with the brine will get soft.
You don't have to use Syrah wine. You can use anything that's as strong in flavor and color. I have seen people do it with watered down balsamic, port wine, liquor etc. Beer/Ale can also do the trick but watch out as it does contain yeast which can either go incredible or contaminate the cheese. Try and see...

For the basic Tomme, this is the recipe:
•   2 gallons milk (I use good quality non-homogenized) - bring to 88F
•   Add 1/4 tsp starter (MA4000, MA4001 or MA4002 are good). Optional: add a pinch of MD89 for butteriness and small eyes
•   Ripen for 30 min
•   Add 1/4 teaspoon CaCl2 (dilute in 1/3 cup water) - skip this step if you are using raw milk.
•   Add 1/2 teaspoon rennet (dilute in 1/3 cup water), stir in gently.
•   Wait for flocculation, multiply by 3 to get total ripening time. Check curd for clean-ish break (will end up around 30-50 min.)
•   Cut into 1/4 inch cubes, rest 5 min stir once or twice to prevent matting.
•   Wash curd: Remove a few cups of whey and replace them warm (140F) water. Stir lightly a few seconds to prevent matting. Repeat this step every 5-10 min over the next 30 minutes and measure temperature. Aim to get the temperature raised to 100F within 30 minutes. Curd should release lots of whey and shrink to grain size. It should feel springy and mat together in the hand if you squeeze it.
•   Line cheese mold with cloth, wash it with the warm whey (prevents sticking and abrupt cooling or pH change).
•   Pack mold with curd (under whey if you can). Place follower and press under own weight or 5Lbs. (can remove from whey now)
•   After 15 min. turn and redress. Repeat 30 min later and 1 more hour later. Increase weight to 10 lbs. overnight.
•   Brine in fully saturated brine 3.5 hrs per side, per lb. (1 part salt to 4.5 parts water, add CalCl2 and a few drops of vinegar) 
•   Dry in room temp on mat or wooden board for 2-3 days. (turn occasionally)
•   Do the wine dipping as explained above. Vacuum, age 65 days at 55F, turn occasionally.

I use 7.5" Tomme mold so I get a disc shaped cheese.
Looks like a lot of steps but actually rather easy. Takes less time than making a Camembert.

Good luck and tell me if you have any questions or problems!

iratherfly,
this recipe looks like gouda, not tomme. i thought you need to heat the curds and whey for tomme and replace whey with hot water for gouda. just wanted to clarify because no matter what is the name the cheese looks delicious.
tan

[iratherfly]

Hi Tan, sorry for the very late response. I've been a way for a few weeks.

This is a very standard Tomme. Tomme is a general style of cheese (round, semi-hard or hard, fully rennet-coagulated that isn't cheddared). This is not one particular cheese and as such the recipe is very liberal.  Think of it as a platform or chassis on top of which you get to build whatever you like to shape it to your own signature character.

This alpine style cheese relies on building acidity in the press so whether you do curd washing or curd cooking doesn't matter. (the purpose is to drain and firm the curd, which will happen with either the cooking or washing techniques).  The only difference as far as the curd is concerned is that when you do washing, you dilute the whey with water and remove some of the curd's flavor and acidity. When you cook the curd by adding heat to the whey you intensify the flavor and acidity. No big deal, you can do it either way. I like the washing because I prefer low acidity which give me a softer paste when the cheese is aged and ready.

[OudeKaas]

Given all of the info and discussion on this forum (and brewing hobbyist overlap), it surprises me that there is very little regarding beer-soaked cheeses. And most of it is cautionary, like "don't use beer in the curds or you will get holes from yeast" or "washing rind with beer can lead to overwhelming bready flavors". OK, that's cool. But I am still interested in the possibilities of immersing cheese in beer and also hard cider.

So, I thought I would give an update on my current experiment. As mentioned above, I took a previously pressed and brined 1-lb cow's milk 'tomme' and soaked it in a strong stout for 3 separate 12-24 hr periods. I guess I did not let it dry enough before I vac-bagged it, because a lot of beer later came out into the bag. So I un-bagged it and was letting it dry in my 'cave' for a bit. Anyhow, with one thing and another I left it there for a while and it seemed to be fine. But eventually, mold began to form. I guess I should have expected this, given that I inoculated the milk with some rind slurry solution and also have been spraying/wiping its neighbors from the same batch of cheese.

So, basically with a mixture of experimentation and laziness I allowed it to continue. So now I have rather a different critter on my hands. It smells good, both beer-y and cheese-mold-y (in a good way, damp basement GC smell) and it appears mostly the same mold as the other cheeses has arisen (no blue/green or other nasties).

As I mentioned above, this is one of two cheeses I cut in half, pressing the cut sides lightly afterwards, and you can clearly see that the cut side has absorbed a lot more dark beer, and also has less light mold. Don't know what to expect from this - it has aged 6 weeks or so now,  am thinking of tasting it in a month or two.


Here you can clearly see the gradation between the darker cut side and the others, which have more mold.


Detail of the cut side showing the darker color with some bits of orange and white/brown mold. I don't know if the brown color really represents a different kind of mold, or it it is just the influence of the beer.


Detail of the uncut side with tighter rind, less beer color. Some of the top layer of mold is kind of flaking off, though?

[smilingcalico]

Thanks for the update Brandnetel. I remember your cheese. I hope to hear your evaluation once you get to taste it.

[iratherfly]

Brandnetel, first off, there have been plenty of positive talks here about beer washed Tommes.  Secondly, there is a huge difference between beer dunking and beer washing.  Dunking will indeed give you this yeasty character. Especially if you just vacuum the cheese and lock all the active yeast and sugars there without using it to grow mold.  Washing on the other hand, will develop lots of character and flavor. It will bring out the B.Linen and grow interesting rinds.  You do have to be watchful and experimental though; some beers, ales and such can make the cheese indeed too sweet, too bitter, too yeasty. You need to choose something that is just right, and it's not always the same beer you prefer drinking.

I actually have now a 56 day old Tommes (1x 1Lb. Petit Tomme, 1x 4Lb full size tomme). that I washed with German wheat ale (Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse) for the first 45 days. It smells wonderful and brought out tons of B.Linen without me ever inoculating it. I am now letting it sit in closed container in humidity and grow wild rind. in the past 10 days or so lots of geo came out and covered it. Now it seems that some mycodore and a slight blue infection from neighboring cheese is helping the rind grow.  The yeast in the beer is the power behind such rich rind. I will follow up with some pics when I get a minute.

As for your experiment, it's a bit too much going on it one cheese. You would be better off deciding on an aging style and focusing on it rather than mixing all these bacterium variety from your slurry with beer and age cheese that is uneven (one cut side, one isn't).  Bacterium are not flavorants or colorants; they are live organisms that require nutrients to exist. When you begin loading too many types of them onto a cheese, they end up fighting each other for nutrients. Some will lose and starve to death while others will survive. The fight will cause them to slow down and you will get a cheese that's neither here nor there. It's is a bit of a waste of time and cultures...  In your case, there is so much going on that you may not be able to recognize what caused which positive or negative character of the cheese.

In short, what I am trying to say is that you will actually get better cheese with more focused flavor, a quicker development, better ability to control, adjust, improve and replicate - if you just tone it down and simplify the process.  Not more than 2 acidifies, not more than 2 rind cultures. Take it from there. ...my two cents.

Lastly, one comment about your beer dunking; how much salt did you add to the beer?  Did you re-use the same beer to do the following dunkings?

[OudeKaas]

Thanks to both of you for the feedback.

irf, I added salt to the beer to make it up to 3% brine and I re-used the same liquid for all of the dunkings. I see your point about this being a bit of a confused cheese - at this point I'll just have to chalk it up to experimentation and see what happens. To get a real baseline I guess I should do a more strictly dunked, dried and vac-packed version next time. This just kind of happened.

I'm not sure I get why a strong-enough beer is significantly different than wine for dunking purposes, though - seems like the alcohol content, residual sugars and presence of yeast would be similar in both cases? The major thing that jumps out at me is I would think the wine would be much more acidic.

[iratherfly]

Beer ans wine are different in acidity, sugar levels, sugar types, yeast contents and yeast strains, alcohol % etc.

As for the salt - 3% is good if you are doing a beer WASH, but if you are DUNKING, you need to be as close as possible (in terms of salt and CalCl2) to your brine (Did you use 18% brine?) If not, than all the salt and CalCl2 you brined into the cheese will leave it to equalize the wine/beer. This depletes the cheese flavor and enhances your wine flavor with more salt that you really don't need.  On the other hand if your wine and cheese has equal amounts of salt and CalCl2, none of them would deplete any towards the other.

Keeping this salt level is not just a matter of flavor but also a matter of keeping solid rind and protecting from pathogens.

[smilingcalico]

Brandnetel, how's the cheese?  As a quick aside, I work at a different dairy thain I did before.  They have been doing a stout soaked cheese for some time.  The current practice (which I am looking at optimizing) is to brine the cheese, then soak it for 7 days in the stout.  Seems like a bit of overkill to me, but the flavor of the cheese is quite good.  There is no salt added to the beer.  The cheese, when taken from the beer, dries quickly and the rind forms quick, feeling and looking as soft, supple, and brown as a baseball glove.  GC is the predominant surface culture.  The wine soaked cheese on the other hand, seems to favor blue surface mold.  My initial thought is to cut back the days in the beer, as I don't think that after 3 days the beer is doing anything more to the cheese.  Thoughts anyone?

[OudeKaas]

Thanks for the reminder, SC. I did cut and try this cheese after about 2.5 months IIRC. I will find my pics and post them, but in brief it was disappointing for me. The base cheese had turned out nice flavor-wise, although harder than desired. Elasticity-wise 1/4" slices would bend only slightly before breaking and when cutting the wheel it had a tendency to flake/fracture. Nice nutty and slightly earthy flavor.

However, the one wheel that I had dunked in stout was not so much to my taste. I would say that it had a very recognizable 'stale beer' aroma and taste to it. And while there was a little bit of a pleasant contribution - call it a dark malty quality - this was not dominant in my opinion. The overall impression was slightly sour-ish and 'off' somehow.

Now, you can take that with a grain of salt as I left a big piece of it with family members and it was apparently consumed with much gusto and there was good feedback (in fairness, the primary eater has a bit of a 'sour tooth' so . . . ) But as for me, next time I would do more of a washed-rind version, or try hard cider as an alternative. We shall see!