Red Leicester

[paulabob]

Happy with this cheese.  First make of the cheesemaking.com recipe.  Tried it after not quite two months, and I love the flavor.  Family appreciated it too.

[rsterne]

Nice job!.... How much annatto did you use in how much milk?....

AC4U....

Bob

[paulabob]

It was a 2 gallons raw + 1 gallon past store milk.  I followed the recipe and used a full teaspoon of annatto.

I've been on a kick lately of doing cheddars and "not quite" cheddars.  This one was fairly easy recipe (and cheesemaking always has such thorough instructions).

[broombank]

looks like the best commercial Red Leicester on sale in the UK cheese shops which is a raw milk product called Sparkenhoe. The larger pasteurised milk Belton Farms make a softer product which I suspect is  shrink  wrapped. I think Sparkenhoe is muslin/lard wrapped and hence a much denser texture. Did you wax it ?

[Aris]

The texture looks spot on for Red Leicester. Well done! Their recipe for this cheese is actually really good because it is very detailed and has pH target. What was the final weight of the cheese?

[paulabob]

With this cheese, I just dried it off (very dry, it cracked a bit), and vacuum packed it.

The weight after pressing was 1452 grams.  It was 1521 before salting and pressing.  I didn't check weight before we started eating it.  It felt like a good yield, but then when I incorporate raw milk, I always get a very good yield.

Texture does feel right from the leicesters I've had before.  Maybe a bit more crumbly.

[paulabob]

Time to make this again.  We just finished off the last of it (should have made another batch 6 months ago).  Was totally excellent at the end, lots of flavor.

Following the same recipe.

[eric1]

I've been thinking of trying a Leicester, too.  Good to hear about your experience.  The description of "not like a cheddar variation, but quite different in both texture and moisture..." appealed to me mainly just for the sake of variety.

[WrongWhey]

Happy with this cheese.  First make of the cheesemaking.com recipe.  Tried it after not quite two months, and I love the flavor.  Family appreciated it too.

Hi, can you describe to me your pressing method for this cheese? I've seen the recipe for it, and was interested, but the recipe I saw called for 150 lbs of weight during the final press. Neither of the cheese presses I bought can reach that weight. I was wondering how you went about it. Thanks for your insight!

[paulabob]

My notes from my first make mentioned giving 122 pounds of pressure.  However, not sure it was necessary, I noted that very little whey leaked out after the first 4 hours.

I think I used closer to 100 this second time.  In general I follow the advice to press with just a bit of whey dripping out, but cheddars are salted and ready to press hard to get those curds to mesh.

Now, this weekend I was just making a Cheshire (from Caldwell's instructions).  It has you press overnight, and if the rind isn't closed, dip the cheese in 165 F water before resuming pressing.  I think that would work with about any cheddar or hard style cheese that's cooled off and the rind hasn't closed.

And by the way, it just smelled so heavenly while it was drying!  I just kept sniffing my cheese!     The cheshire smelled nice too, a very buttery smell.

[mikekchar]

Yeah, you can't over press a cheddar, basically.  It's already drained so the only thing you are doing is closing the rind.  Having said that, if you care about mechanical holes in the interior of the cheese, start with a smaller weight and work up.  It's the same thing as with removing whey.  If you close the rind too quickly, there is no place for the air in the gaps to go.  But if you don't care, then you can just crank it up to thousands of pounds with no problems at all, I think.

[WrongWhey]

My notes from my first make mentioned giving 122 pounds of pressure.  However, not sure it was necessary, I noted that very little whey leaked out after the first 4 hours.

I think I used closer to 100 this second time.  In general I follow the advice to press with just a bit of whey dripping out, but cheddars are salted and ready to press hard to get those curds to mesh.

Now, this weekend I was just making a Cheshire (from Caldwell's instructions).  It has you press overnight, and if the rind isn't closed, dip the cheese in 165 F water before resuming pressing.  I think that would work with about any cheddar or hard style cheese that's cooled off and the rind hasn't closed.

And by the way, it just smelled so heavenly while it was drying!  I just kept sniffing my cheese!     The cheshire smelled nice too, a very buttery smell.

Thanks for all that. Good information! I've only made a few types of cheese so far, but I did find myself popping into the cheese cave often just to smell the goudas before I ended up vacuum sealing them. A good whiff of cheese aroma can be almost intoxicating!

[WrongWhey]

Yeah, you can't over press a cheddar, basically.  It's already drained so the only thing you are doing is closing the rind.  Having said that, if you care about mechanical holes in the interior of the cheese, start with a smaller weight and work up.  It's the same thing as with removing whey.  If you close the rind too quickly, there is no place for the air in the gaps to go.  But if you don't care, then you can just crank it up to thousands of pounds with no problems at all, I think.

Thanks for the tip on adding weight in increments. Definitely makes of sense. Seems like there's a bit of an art and a bit of some science to getting it right. I'm going to make an effort to actually observe the whey coming out as my next cheese presses like you suggest.