My husband is a bar owner. As a result, I hang with lots of bar tenders. This is bleeding into my cheese-making reality in the form of cheeses based on mixed drinks... I have a new experiment aging in my cave now... It's based on a shot progression called a "Puerto Rican Hooker." (I don't name the drinks. I just steal the recipes.) The "drink" is a shot of tequila followed by a shot of pickle juice. It's like tequila with drinkable training wheels. It's very, very popular here.
On that note, I made a caerphilly, and during the cheddaring phase, I added tequila to the curd. During the brining phase, I used acid whey as the base and added dill pickling spices to the brine, and soaked my cheese in what amounts to a fermented pickle brine... Now the cheeses are aging in my cave for a month and a half... If this comes out as well as the "Irish Curd Bomb," I think I may have found my niche as a cheesemaker...
;-)
I'll keep you posted...
