I live in Switzerland, so it's not hard to buy good cheese. Good Stilton, however, isn't so easy to get, so I threw caution to the wind and tried to make one. The only other cheeses I've ever made are mozzarella and tofu
So, I'm pretty out of my league, but so far it smells great after 2 weeks. I only used a gallon of milk, and it was raw. Up to aging @10C, I mostly followed
https://cheesemaking.com/collections/recipes/products/stilton-cheese-making-recipe, because my ultimate target Stilton would be
https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/products/colston-bassett-stilton and their method seems pretty old school
https://www.insider.com/how-traditional-english-stilton-blue-cheese-is-made-2019-12. I liked the idea of making a starter from Stilton, so I followed David Fankhauser's tutorial for culturing with a blue cheese slurry
https://fankhauserblog.wordpress.com/tag/blue-cheese/. For aging, I consulted
https://sites.google.com/site/cheeseres/stilton which links to several great posts on this forum.
I realize one newbie blue mistake I made was not packing the mold with more pressure. Though I realized 4 gals was recommended to get enough curd mass to compact the curds naturally, this was like a "proof of concept" for me, so I wasn't expecting perfect results. But, the fear of inhibiting blue mold growth from too much packing made me skip putting a weight on the mold for moderate pressure. In addition, I ripened for 5 days @20C, so as you see in the photo, I had robust mold growth before rubbing and starting the aging process. The rubbing seems to have helped retard blue growth, which I now understand is essential for taste development of the cheese itself. I am not measuring humidity, but the aging box (cardboard) that I fashioned for my experiment seems to be working well. The cheese isn't weeping, but it doesn't seem to be drying out either.
My questions are: should I wait 7 weeks to pierce? Should I shorten overall aging time, since it is such a small wheel? Thanks again for your continuing help!