Hi everyone!
I have two questions: 1. Oops--this is so embarrassing
I brine my cheese in a crockpot in my cheese fridge. I couldn't see into it very clearly and forgot I had a cheese in there! So, it was in there for a few days (yes, my whole record-keeping system broke down! But I have already ordered the edible ink pens...) Anyway, when I took off the top, it smelled fermented--or not quite fermented like beer is fermented, but more like when I do saurkraut with whey. Fizzy--it smelled fizzy. And there were some coagulated ? places in the brine, where there was a sort of solid cloud that I could lift out?
Since nothing smelled
bad, I put the cheese up to dry, but thought I would ask about that, despite the fact that possibly no one knows about this since maybe nobody has ever by mistake left a cheese in the brine for way too long. (I did get rid of that brine, tho.)(Gee, maybe I should have drunk it?)
2. Y'all may recall that since I use an old fridge for my cheese that I had trouble with the cheeses dehydrating. I experimented with different things (like boiling the cheeses), and the thing that seems to work, at least if the cheese is only a little far gone, is re-soaking it in whey. Does anyone have any idea about this, again considering that probably no one has ever dehydrated their cheese like this?
I have also ordered a hygrometer
Thanks so much, everyone!!!!
Thanks