Author Topic: Couple of cheesey questions  (Read 1549 times)

Shadow0144

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Couple of cheesey questions
« on: March 05, 2021, 08:13:32 PM »
I just started making cheese, so I had a few questions. I tried looking around to see if they were already answered, but didn't see anything, also a lot of the wiki and FAQ links are broken. :(

The recipe I have for cheddar says it's supposed to be a 10 degrees C, while most of the other recipes I have want 13 degrees. Is that 3 degrees going to make a difference? Can I just ferment it longer?
I cloth-banded the cheddar, but the video I saw seemed to show two layers of cloth. I only did one. How thick is the banding supposed to be?
Will the mold that grows on the banding affect the other cheeses if they're all waxed?

I started an Emmentaler a while ago, and there're parts on the rind where slightly orange blotches are - is that okay? I tried removing them, but they seem a little deep. I don't want to destroy the rind to get rid of a non-issue if they aren't a problem. It's at the eye-development stage, and I'm going to wax it in a few days.
I saw mention of oiling these cheeses before - can you always do that before waxing? Can I just use any food oil? Is there any drawback to doing it? I just rinse it off with the brine wash before waxing, right?

A lot of recipes call for something like "mesophilic culture" and some call for specific things like "M11 mesophilic culture" - why can you get away with a generic culture in some recipes, but other ones want a specific one? What do the codes mean? How do I know what a C101 vs an M11 is?

What happens if I cut the curds too small?

Why isn't there a cheese emote?

Sorry if these questions are answered somewhere else.

Offline Chetty

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2021, 08:45:14 PM »
Welcome

To start at the top,
Cheddar I'm assuming your talking aging temp.  Cheddar is pretty forgiving I keep my cave usually around 50 to 55 degrees f but over the winter it managed to get down to 38 and 40 I did have a heater but its thermostat wasn't very accurate. 

Bandage wrapping, i do two layers when i do it but I've heard if you use butter muslin you might could get away with one.  Personally i think 2  to be on the safe side is better. 

Orange spots can be many thing from yeasts to b linens, linens good yeast not so much.  Pictures are helpful to identify things like this. 

I only oil my natural rinded cheeses.  I'm no expert on wax but the few I've done in the past I air dryed for a couple of days then wiped with vinagar then waxed.

Cultures are complex.  Its helpful to learn the bacteria that make up the mixes.  I think sailor posted a chart of cultures and there mixes years ago. 

Cutting curds too small will make your cheese drier, the smallest I cut is to rice sized others I keep to small pea or corn size mostly depending on the recipe and desired aging. 

Happy cheese making
Chet

Offline Mornduk

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2021, 09:21:06 PM »
Welcome!


Offline broombank

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2021, 09:50:17 PM »
I suggest you invest in a copy of Mastering Artisan Cheese making by Gianaclis Caldwell. The amount of detail in the book will answer all your questions. It is also one of the few American books which recognises that the rest of the world exists and gives metric equivalents for everything which saves a lot of time and hassle. I have personally wrestled with all the questions you ask and have found adequate solutions. I have only been doing this for three months but the first cheeses ( Camembert, Brie, Triple creme Imeruli Salted Ricotta) have all vastly exceeded my expectations.  The biggest challenge is that all the books disagree so working out what to do is a question of weighing up conflicting priorities. Gianaclis is expert at imparting sufficient knowledge to allow you to make your own decisions in a way which will allow you to predict the consequences. The other books I have are much more prescriptive. Its like the difference between painting by numbers and art!   Good luck ( you don't say where you are located ??)

Shadow0144

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #4 on: March 07, 2021, 09:28:31 PM »
Welcome

To start at the top,
Cheddar I'm assuming your talking aging temp.  Cheddar is pretty forgiving I keep my cave usually around 50 to 55 degrees f but over the winter it managed to get down to 38 and 40 I did have a heater but its thermostat wasn't very accurate. 

Bandage wrapping, i do two layers when i do it but I've heard if you use butter muslin you might could get away with one.  Personally i think 2  to be on the safe side is better. 

Thanks!

It's more at like 56 degrees F, would that still be okay?
Okay, I guess I'll give it another layer then. What do the bandages actually do? Just keep moisture in? I saw they will have mold growth on them eventually.

Orange spots can be many thing from yeasts to b linens, linens good yeast not so much.  Pictures are helpful to identify things like this.


I didn't notice those hairs until I saw this picture full-size. This was before I gave it a brine wash though, so hopefully I got rid of them. I changed the mat too.
The spot seems to have gotten less colorful since I started brine washing more often (I think).
I think I will try to wax this one tomorrow if everything's okay with it.
Edit: Someone somewhere mentioned a stiff brush for cleaning off the mold on cheeses. I bought a gout brush, but I think it's cutting pretty deep even when I try to be gentle. Should I be using something like a hard toothbrush or are paper towels usually enough?

I only oil my natural rinded cheeses.  I'm no expert on wax but the few I've done in the past I air dryed for a couple of days then wiped with vinagar then waxed.

So do I need to wax the Emmentaler at all? I'm supposed to keep it at 56 F / 13 C for a couple months next. I think it's got its own rind. The recipe I'm following mentioned waxing it though.
 
Cultures are complex.  Its helpful to learn the bacteria that make up the mixes.  I think sailor posted a chart of cultures and there mixes years ago. 

Okay, I did some searching and found some charts. It seems most of them serve a similar purpose, but do impart some different flavors? I'll keep reading up on it then.

Cutting curds too small will make your cheese drier, the smallest I cut is to rice sized others I keep to small pea or corn size mostly depending on the recipe and desired aging.

Okay, hopefully I haven't ruined them then. I keep accidentally cutting them too small, especially when I go for the diagonals. I guess I'll go ahead and try to invest in a cheese harp.

Happy cheese making
Chet

Thanks, you too!

The insert quote buttons aren't working for me, so sorry in advance for the double / triple post.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2021, 09:34:55 PM by Shadow0144 »

Shadow0144

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #5 on: March 07, 2021, 09:28:58 PM »

Shadow0144

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #6 on: March 07, 2021, 09:32:15 PM »
I suggest you invest in a copy of Mastering Artisan Cheese making by Gianaclis Caldwell. The amount of detail in the book will answer all your questions. It is also one of the few American books which recognises that the rest of the world exists and gives metric equivalents for everything which saves a lot of time and hassle. I have personally wrestled with all the questions you ask and have found adequate solutions. I have only been doing this for three months but the first cheeses ( Camembert, Brie, Triple creme Imeruli Salted Ricotta) have all vastly exceeded my expectations.  The biggest challenge is that all the books disagree so working out what to do is a question of weighing up conflicting priorities. Gianaclis is expert at imparting sufficient knowledge to allow you to make your own decisions in a way which will allow you to predict the consequences. The other books I have are much more prescriptive. Its like the difference between painting by numbers and art!   Good luck ( you don't say where you are located ??)

Okay, I'll grab a copy of that then, thanks!
I agree, but I think things are slowly changing. I dream of one day freeing ourselves from the yoke of TSP and TBSP.

I'm very excited to try to make a Brie soon.

I'm in the US of A right now, in the Midwest.

Offline mikekchar

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2021, 07:31:17 AM »
My main advice is don't cloth band a cheddar until you have considerable experience doing natural rinds.  Cloth banding is less forgiving, not more forgiving.  Also, there is no need to cloth band unless you intend to age the cheese for a very long time.  It helps keep in moisture, but if you are only going to age for a few month (up to a year depending on the size of the cheese) it's not going to be an issue.  The problem with cloth is that if you don't get the make right, you can get a fair amount of moisture trapped under the cloth and you cheese will rot (virtually every picture of people trying to do cloth banded cheeses on reddit seem to end up that way).

Do not clear a cheese with a stiff brush.  You want a super soft, ideally natural bristle brush.  Basically you are looking for something similar to a shaving brush (or actually a shaving brush).  Horse hair is said to be good because it has good strength while being soft and it has a natural hook on the end that helps clean the rind.  But, unless you are oiling your natural rinds, natural rinds are all about what you grow on them.  The biggest thing to understand is that cheese grows stuff on it.  You can not avoid this.  Oiling the rind makes a kind of natural plastic barrier that makes it easier to wipe off mold, etc (and makes it harder for mold to grow).  But otherwise you rind will be covered in yeast, mold and bacteria.  Your job is to choose which ones you want.  Those will (hopefully) outcompete the ones you don't want.

Generally, if you want stuff growing less, you should keep the humidity down -- but too low and your cheese will dry out or even crack.  So you need to have it high enough that mold will grow on it.  You can brush it (even with your hand, a soft brush or a cloth), but you still need to encourage the correct things to grow.  Usually that means geotrichum (white mold-like yeast).  If you get that established then looking after the rind is pretty easy.  Also, once the rind gets out to about 4 weeks, as long as it is closed it's pretty much invulnerable to everything except b. linens.  You can let whatever you want grow on it and brush it off whenever you want (more brushing means thinner rind most of the time).

A traditional alpine rind is usually made by encouraging b. linens (like a washed rind) but then aggressively drying it off.  Only geotrichum will grow on top of b. linens so you have a nice clean orange/red rind.  But if you don't dry it off enough, the b. linens will rot your cheese :-)  Humidity control is the name of the game.

There is so much to say about natural rind cheeses and I don't really have time to type in even what little I know...  But that's kind of an overview...

Offline broombank

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2021, 05:10:17 PM »
Shadow 144 - I'm so glad you too find the tsp tbsp rigmarole as annoying as I do. Gianaclis Caldwell has really helpful conversion tables translating 3 'ends of skewers' into grams !  Actually at least the US is consistent unlike their UK counterparts who succeed in mixing metric and imperial measures in a way which is not just confusing but can be dangerous.

Offline Lancer99

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Re: Couple of cheesey questions
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2021, 07:46:03 AM »
I am going to disagree with Mike, sort of. I have never had a cloth-banded Cheddar-type (except for one, but that was for a different reason) go bad. I haven't found any significant difference, after a year, between cloth-bound and not.  Cloth-bound cheeses look pretty cool but they are a PITA to do.

-L