I keep threatening to talk about my aged, acid coagulated, non-rennet cheeses, but I never do. I'm in the middle of building a web page that describes what I'm doing, but I'm lazy and never finish it, so here's a link to my unfinished page, in case you are interested in what I'm doing:
https://mikekchar.gitlab.io/mistem-cheese/.
I made cheese yesterday. Only a 1 litre make. It was homogenised milk, so the yield is higher (opposite than rennet cheeses ;-) ). Yield after draining is 180g. I use a hoop made out of a PET bottle and I'm currently in the process of making a bigger one (especially so I can get the height of the cheese lower than the width). Here's pic of it. Sorry for the poor picture quality:
It didn't really go well yesterday. You can see the very open structure of the cheese. It's my first time with this milk and I'm not sure it's going to work out. Also, it's the first time I've used this particular technique with homogenised milk. When I first started, I just ripened the milk for 45 minutes and then added about 3-4 g of citric acid dissolved in water. I've since changed to ripening for about 3 hours and then adding about 1 g of citric acid (or less). Here's a picture of a more typical cheese (although it's been aged for about 2 weeks):
The picture on my website is from a 9 week old cheese that was made with 500ml of unhomogenised milk, so it was very small. It dried out quite a bit, but was delicious (despite the little bit of mildew you see adorning the rind). Here's a pic of the paste for one of the same size that isn't so dried out:
Anyway, I'm half tempted to get some gorganzola and rub a paste on this one, because with that open structure it would make a nice blue (and this cheese tastes *amazing* as a blue), but my original plan was to eat it fresh, so I think I'll carry on with that plan.
This kind of cheese works really well both as a fresh cheese and aged. Using a long ripening period the cheese (as you would probably expect) has very similar texture and flavour as a young goat's cheese. As I use cow's milk, it's much more delicate a flavour, but it's quite nice. I guess the main difference is that it is not spreadable.
As it ages, it picks up a piquant flavour. The aroma moves slightly towards that of parmesan, though the flavour never does. In the first 2 weeks or so, it has a flavour very similar to Caerphilly and a similar texture, although less crumbly. After that the flavour kind of "closes" -- in other words, it becomes less distinct, and the paste gets creamier. Somewhere in around the 2-4 week mark, I would say that I don't really like it. The combination of the texture and flavour reminds one of cream cheese (which I'm not a big fan of). As the paste dries out, though, the texture firms up and the flavour improves dramatically. I have no cheese to compare it to as it's a flavour I've never had before in cheese. I suppose if I'm pressed, imagine a raclette with the cheese being melted -- that's probably close. I should also point out that the cheese melts very well and has a nice flavour (although quite mild in the first month or so). I had it in a cheese omlette and on potatoes and it worked very well (my wife was astounded as she did not have much faith in my experiments). Finally between 2-3 months (the longest I've aged it), the flavour gets more intense. This is probably the sweet spot for this cheese, but since I've been making piddly sized cheeses to experiment with, they are getting pretty dried out by that point. I'll be upping the sizes over time.
As I said, I've experimented with blues. Originally by accident -- the wild blue in my area is amazing for some reason. As you can see, the interior of the paste is very closed, so it never gets any veining -- but if I cooked the curd a bit I think that would not be a problem to fix. I've also experimented with a washed rind. B. linens showed up wild after my 3rd cheese or so. It freaked me out at first, but once I learned what it was, I decided to go with it. The result was extremely nice, but the bacteria dried off and I never got a soft paste. Which might be good because I have a really hard time getting a decent rind on these cheeses. It's *very* thin (and susceptible to breaking down easily). It's much more like ageing a lactic goat's cheese (which, again, stands to reason). I'm going to try a bloomy rind, which I expect to work reasonably well, but I keep wondering if a proper washed rind will just end up in a puddle. It's on my list of experiments, though.
Finally, I also tried with a mesophilic culture (from butter milk culture). It results in a much more open structure (very similar to the cheese I made yesterday). It's hard to keep the blue off of it. However, the flavour is really nice. I had one that I aged for about 6 weeks and it had a nice young cheddar/colby flavour going on. I would have liked to have aged it longer, but I was fighting a losing battle with blue mould. Will try again.
I should also mention that all of my ageing is in my normal refrigerator at about 6 C (43 F). I don't have a cheese fridge yet. I recently scored the marital achievement of being given permission to purchase one, but as I'm travelling a lot this fall and winter, it will have to wait until the new year. Still, given that I'm making up this style of cheese, I think it's fine to say that it should be aged in the fridge :-) Would love to try ageing it at 13 C, though.
I've been loathe to post my experiments here because I really don't know what I'm doing. But as I've been making these cheeses I'm getting a bit more confidence. No matter how much I'm stumbling around trying to figure out what works best, all of the cheeses have been *really* delicious. I had a cheese board out with a decent compte and caciocavallo (both commercial) along with my cheese. Mine definitely held it's own (especially the blue!), so I figure I might as well encourage other people who might think that this is crazy.
