Hey all,
A few years back I decided to get into cheesemaking. It didn't go so well! I was ok at mozzarella and cream cheese, but none of the hard cheeses turned out. I tried a Jack recipe, a cheddar recipe, a swiss, and a parmesan. Both the jack and the cheddar had chalky, crumbly curd and were sharp and bitter. The swiss was soft like it should be, and actually tasted ok, but was a bit rubbery and didn't melt at all (this was the most successful), and the parmesan, after two years of aging, seemed way too hard, not at all crumbly but more like solid plastic, and while it had the right aroma, the finely shredded product didn't taste like much at all! Kind of like it was all rind.
At any rate, it's been about three years, and I think I'll give it another go. I've still got a wine refrigerator and a dutch press I built, a cylindrical mold, and I recently purchased a sous vide termostat that I intend to use with my countertop roaster as a water bath. I really am good at following directions to the "T", but many of the recipes I was following had sort of vague instructions that require experience to understand. I'm excited to have found this forum, because I can read about what other people are doing and hopefully avoid some of the problems I had last time.
