Manchego - clabber test make

[stratocasterdave]

Back in the beginning of the year (Jan 2013) I had access to some frozen Ewes milk.  Bought 4 gallons from 2 different time periods.  Two of the gallons ended up separated pretty badly after the slow thaw.  The other two were perfect and made wonderful manchego!

Instead of tossing the separated sheep milk I decided to strain it, press it, brine it, and age it!  I let it age for almost a year.  Opened it today and was pleasantly surprised!  It was a nice hard cheese. 

So no, rennet or culture at all.  Just time.

Anyone else ever make a cheese like this??

[Geodyne]

Wow, that's cheese alright. I'm intrigued by the dimple in the middle. Did this lose further moisture in the ageing? Did you just strain the pure milk or is there rennet of some form in there?

[Pete S]

  When I still lived on the farm We made cheese like this with separated cow milk all the time .We just let it sour
till it curdled, heated it to firm up the curd and drained it. What we got was dry curd cottage cheese. if we wanted hard cheese we would press it.  Pete

[stratocasterdave]

Pete, that's essentially what I did.

Geo, I think the dimples came from further drying over the year. 

Dave

[jwalker]

Dave , a cheese to you for that cheese.

How about flavor and texture , is there any cheese you would compare it to ?

Ant idea of the weight of the cheese , that's from 2 gallons right ?

I tried some cheese from Kefir once , much like that one of yours , no rennet , no other cultures , it takes a long time to drain.

I like it.

[stratocasterdave]

It was pretty much a normal manchego. Sheep milk yields a lot more than cow. I bet it was three lbs.