Newbie Cheese Press

[Kern]

Kern, where do you store your brine -- in the fridge, in the cheese cave, or just at room temperature?

Andy, I store my brine in a couple of gallon jugs sitting on the concrete floor of my garage next to my cheese cave.  In the winter this keeps them right around 55F.  The south facing garage will heat up in the summer.  I'll still store them there but pop them into the freezer for a couple of hours to cool to 55F shortly before brining.  Then everything will have to go into the cheese cave. 

[jimk]

Although my cheese is 8 inches in dia, it is only about 1 1/2 inch thick. I'm smoking it as we speak.

[Kern]

Although my cheese is 8 inches in dia, it is only about 1 1/2 inch thick. I'm smoking it as we speak.

Forgive me for this:  Is your cheese hard to stay lit?   8)

[awakephd]

I'm more concerned about the size of the pipe he needs to hold an 8" cheese!

[jimk]

LOL

[jimk]

Ready for waxing

[Kern]

It looks well smoked!  It will be interesting to see how it comes out.  I can see where you'd want a large diameter to height ratio for a smoked cheese and waxing is a great choice as it will minimize the loss of most of the paste if you went with a natural rind.  Normally, one likes to see a D/H ratio something around 2 or 1.5 for a semi-hard to hard cheese.  This is a good balance between aesthetics and a surface to volume ratio that allows for natural rinds.  Still, even with anything less than a 4 gallon batch the surface to volume ratio will be high enough to result in a significant loss of paste to the rind formation.  Waxing or vacuum bagging will help produce a rindless cheese.

[jimk]

Thanks for the input Kern, I am currently making another Gouda with a 5 inch diameter mold to see which works better.

[Flound]

Although my cheese is 8 inches in dia, it is only about 1 1/2 inch thick. I'm smoking it as we speak.

Forgive me for this:  Is your cheese hard to stay lit?   8)

I know you'll be happy to know that elicited a huge groan. :)

[jimk]

Good job on this cheese with your press.  You'll get better results when brining if your brine to cheese volume ratio is higher than you show in the photo.  I'm guessing you are likely less than 1 part of brine to 1 part of cheese by volume.  Ideally, you should be about 5:1.  During brining the cheese gives up water and picks up salt.  The rate is dependent upon the salt concentration of the brine.  As the brine picks up water the concentration goes down thus pulling the rate down.  The danger is that you end up with less salt in the cheese than you should have.  Brine can be reused many times.  I keep a couple of gallons on hand and use a container large enough to hold a large cheese and almost two gallons of brine.  When finished I filter the brine through a funnel lined with a paper towel back into the bottles and add enough salt to leave some on the bottom (saturated solution).  Good cheese has three variables in good balance:  salt, moisture content and pH.  Having your cheese swimming in a good amount of saturated brine will help with salt and moisture content.   ;)

This one actually came out tasting a bit too salty