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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => RENNET COAGULATED - Hard Other => Topic started by: cheesewiz on January 10, 2010, 02:40:47 PM
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I'm a fairly new cheesemaker and my hard cheeses have finally aged enough to eat. I've been cutting down the 2 lb recipes in Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking and making 1 lb cheeses. I just tasted my "Guido's Cheese," which called for a 24 hour brining and found it to be a bit salty. Should I have halved the brining period, since I halved all the other ingredients to make a 1 lb cheese? Thanks!
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Cheezewiz, correct, for half the volume of cheese, roughly halve the time, depending on the brine strength.
Salt amount is critical in cheese, there's some info here (http://www.cheeseforum.org/Making/Making.htm) on Salt's function and on making and using brine's. Basically adjust your duration up down on each batch to control and optimize. There's more info in the Standard Methods - Forming Cheese Board (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,183.0.html), just click on "Subject" heading to sort and then scroll down to Theads starting with "Brine".
Also, when going to larger cheeses, be careful how you place in and remove from brine (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1944.0.html).
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I'm a fairly new cheesemaker and my hard cheeses have finally aged enough to eat. I've been cutting down the 2 lb recipes in Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking and making 1 lb cheeses. I just tasted my "Guido's Cheese," which called for a 24 hour brining and found it to be a bit salty. Should I have halved the brining period, since I halved all the other ingredients to make a 1 lb cheese? Thanks!
As a rule of thumb, I brine most of my cheese in saturated salt brine, 2-1/2 hours for each 1 pound of cheese, flipping at half time.
This is not the first time people complain about Ricki's salting "regime".
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Thanks, guys. I so appreciate your helpful responses. So much trial and error learning on my part.... :-\