Hello,
My name is David and I've been experimenting with cheese for about a year now. I came to this through work. I'm a camp director and I convinced the camp to buy a cow so that we could produce our own dairy for our participants. This has been great and has enhanced our program on a bunch of levels. Since we are a seasonal business, but our cow Perrywinkle doesn't lactate on our camp schedule, we've found ourselves with a constant flow of milk. Rather than go to waste, I've resolved to take time from running the camp to making cheese. My hope is to incorporate the cheese into our camp's programming. Of course, I started off making the obligatory fresh cheeses and now I'm on to pressing the curds and just experimenting with ageing. I've got lots of questions about drying/ageing. I've also been recently obsessed with trying to figure out a cheap way to create a water bath cooking system that can easily and accurately adjust temperatures. I'm having issues and left with questions about stirring curds (too much vs. not enough). Anyhow, the more I learn about making cheese, the more questions I have and the more variables I notice that can affect the outcome. This is all fascinating. I'm glad I found this forum because I've had lots of questions and only a fair number of answers. I'm hoping this is my new go-to place. I look forward to some good discussions.
The details...
David B.
Fall/Winter/Spring in Clarksville, MD.
Summer in Washington, Maine.
Make my cheese from a Jersey cow named Perrywinkle. She gives us a nice butterfat content of about 5.25%
So far have made Cheddar and cheddar curds, "American", a homemade Velveeta and various fresh cheeses.
