Hi all,
New guy from South Coast (Nowra). Just made the cheese-making workshop. We took home fetta and camembert. Fetta is in the brine ripening, smelling and looking good. Camembert developed nice mold and is maturing in the cave nicely.
I wanted to make my own cheese for long time, but by watching various youtube videos and reading about the stuff online sounded a bit complicated. I'm quite busy with other homemade projects ( I make my own cold smoked sausages, bacon, salamis, lonzinos, do a lot of vegetable pickling, growing mushrooms, fermenting sauerkraut, kimchi, gherkins etc.). Then my wife bought me a voucher for cheese making course and I'm so glad because this course lifted a bit of mystery for me.
So I think I'll give it a go. My favourite cheeses are any cheese made from sheep's milk, fetta, blue vein, jarlsberg, havarti (the best for making smoked cheese) and any cheese that is smelly (german harzkasse).
I need to buy a bit more equipment. Although I have a lot of meat processing and pickling gear, I'd like to keep milk and meat separate. Cheese gone bad might ruin my day, but fermented and air dried meat product might land me in hospital bed....
Cheese cave was the easiest gear to acquire, I'm running my homemade meat curing chamber, fully electronically controlled temperature (+ 0.5C) and humidity (+ 2%.
I would kill to get my hand on raw sheep's milk, but unfortunately this looks impossible in Australia (of all countries, with the highest ratio of sheep per capita!).
Anyway, just saying hello to fellow Aussie cheese hobbyists.
Cheers.