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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => RENNET COAGULATED - Hard Cheddared (Normally Stacked & Milled) => Topic started by: JeffHamm on January 27, 2014, 06:01:28 AM
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Hi,
This make procedure was first posted by fied a few years ago. I've only made this once before, and it was very good. It's a fairly long make, and it's been awhile since our weekends have been free of social commitments and I could spend some time making cheese. In fact, this summer has been particularly low on the curdling time. Anyway, this one is still in the press, so no photos of the cheese just yet, but the make seems to have gone well. Pav posted a link to a chart that lists typical protein to fat ratios, and for Cheshire it indicated a ratio of 0.79:1 p:f. So, I worked out what combination of milk and cream I would need, and got it bang on. I figure any cheese that requires adding a bunch of cream to whole milk has got to be good! :)
Also made ricotta, and got 436g worth. I'll update tomorrow with details and photo of the cheese once it's out of the press and the make is complete.
- Jeff
Cheshire Cheese (Monday, Jan 27, 2014) Sunny, air temp 20-21 C
11 L homebrand Standard milk
200 mls Pam’s cream (combined we get 0.79 P:F ratio, which is spot on)
3 ice cubes MW3 (fied's original procedure was to use creme freche as the starter)
½ tsp CaCl (50%) in egg cup water
1.7 ml rennet 280 IMCU calf rennet (in egg cup water)
30-32.5 ml salt
1. Add CaCl2 to milk while setting up
2. Add starter and warm milk to 30 C (actual temp 30.1 C)
3. Cover, and ripen 30 minutes. (start time 6:58 - 7:28 end temp ??.? C),
4. ensure temp. 30.0 (??.?) C
5. Add rennet and mix. Time: 7:29:00 Floc time 7:45:00 floc length 16 min 00 sec
6. 3x floc.= 48 min 00 sec cut time = 8:17:00 (delayed, cut at 8:22:00)
7. Cut curd into 1.25 cm pieces. Let stand for 5 mins (start time 8:27:00 – 8:38 end temp 29.3 C)
8. Drain whey until the curds can be seen just below the level of the whey (I didn’t have to drain any).
9. Cook curds, raising temp. gradually to 32 C over an hour, stir for first 50 minutes. (start time 8:39 -9:38 end temp 32.1 C)
10. Cover and blanket 40 minutes (start time 9:38 - 10:18 end temp ??.? C) (sink water 35; had drained off whey and warmed it up to 32, then realised it had to soak for 40. Put whey back on at 9:55).
11. Tip off rest of whey, keeping curd cake whole, then cut curd into equal fist-sized chunks. Return to pot, cover and keep at 32 C for 3 hours. (start time 10:25 - 1:25) (had to press with a follower and 2 litre jug of water to get the curds into a cake for cutting into “fist sized”)
12. Tip off any whey in the pot and tear chunks into 1" pieces and salt in the pot.
13. Press into cheesecloth lined mould and add weight at 10kg (0.72psi) for 30 min. (1:45-2:15)
14. Turn cheese, adjust cloth and weight at 20 kgs (1.43 psi) for 30 mins. (2:15-2:45)
15. Turn cheese, adjust cloth and press at between 35.2 kg (2.53psi) for 16 hours. (2:45pm-7:35pm, flipped redressed – excellent knit already - pressed until 5:55 am Tuesday)
16. Take off cloth, turn cheese and put back in press at the same press weights for 3 hours to get rid of cloth marks. (??:??-?:??; Tuesday – didn’t need this, excellent knit and no cloth marks)
17. Salt cheese all over with 1 tsp salt and dry on cheese mat/rack at room temp., under gauze, for a day. Next day wipe off brine and return to drying at room temp. for 7 to 10 days, depending on when the rind, bottom and top, feels dry to the touch and there's no more seepage of whey. Turn once a day.
18. Then either bandage cheese and age at 60F/16C for 2 months and up to a year, turning cheese daily for three months then twice a week up until time of eating, OR don't bandage, but leave to develop a natural rind with the same aging conditions as a bandaged one.
During step 11 made ricotta: heated to 93.0 C, and ¼ cup cider vinegar, let sit for 15-20 minutes. Scooped into cheesecloth and drained. Added 1-2% salt by weight (got 436 g, so added 6g salt).
1596g out of the press (15.6 X 7.2 cm; 1.16 g/cm3). Knit was excellent.
Friday, Jan 31, 2014: Moved into the cave today. Looks good. Fantastic aroma!
Monday, Feb 3, 2014: First appearance of blue mould. Brushed it off both faces. Otherwise, very clean rind still.
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Wow never realised you got so much ricotta out of that amount of whey, I must try that next time I make cheese.
In fact, this summer has been particularly low on the curdling time.
I had to look twice, then looked at your location, as it sure isn't summer here in Manchester :D :D
Wet and cold, mind you summer wasn't much better. >:( >:(
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Hi graysalchemy!
Yes, Manchester in the winter doesn't have a global appeal. However, we stayed in Manchester in the spring of 2009 for a couple months and it was fantastic. We were staying just outside Manchester (a couple train stations out past the hat museum - which we went to see, indecently, and it was well worth the time), and I had to commute to the University of Lancaster each day, but the trains were good with on a few hiccoughs on the way. The first being my missing my stop and it turning out that the next stop was about 30 minutes away, and the next returning train a few hours after that. Needless to say, by the time I caught that train I just went home and decided to start again the next day. :)
Our summer has been pretty wet and cold this year. Started out pretty good, but it's been dour for the past month or so.
- Jeff
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Whereas I'm about to roast with 34C, high winds and a total fire ban today. At least it's a work day so I can hide in the airconditioning, but it will cope about as poorly as I will, I think! DH has popped back to Cambridge for a few weeks and it's a total contrast, with wind and sleet.
Nice looking cheese Jeff. There are a number of differences here from the make I've been doing, and I think I'd like to try this one to compare. Is there a reason why you're draining the whey to curd level after cutting?
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Hi Geo,
What a difference an ocean makes, eh? :) We're having a decent day today at least.
I think the draining after cutting, is just so that when you're warming up to cook the curds there isn't so much liquid to heat up. In my case, the curds don't really expel much whey at this point, so there wasn't anything to drain. The procedure was originally posted by fied, from Scotland, but I've not seen them on the board for a couple years. The dry salting after taking it out of the press was something they did because any cheese they left out would get contaminated by blue very quickly, so the salting was to firm up the rind. That could probably be skipped if you don't normally have an issue with early mould contamination. I've done it this time, though, just to see how it goes. I doubt it will take 7 to 10 days to dry out enough to go in the cave, and I expect it will be ready in 4 or 5, which is typical for me.
Have you posted your make? I would like to compare the make notes. - Never mind, I found the thread! :)
- Jeff
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Ah, I remember Fied's make. They used creme fraich as part of the culture.
The make I used this past weekend was different to the ones I posted. I tried Caldwell's basic stirred-curd cheese, but it's not making as traditional a Cheshire as I'd like. More a mild cheddar-like cheese. I'm still on the search for the perfect recipe and really must update my thread with my findings to date.
An ocean really does make a difference. I've just checked the weather and they're now predicting 36C. I've moved my air-drying parmesan to the cave for the day. You're further north than me and all!
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Hi graysalchemy!
Yes, Manchester in the winter doesn't have a global appeal.
Yes we are renowned for it always raining, but if we didn't have the rain then Manchester would never have become Cottonopolis, and without Cottonopolis and its eventual decline we wouldn't have had the economic and social depravation, and without that Mancunians wouldn't have anything to moan about (apart from the weather) and if we did have a culture of maoning then we wouldn't have such a colourful artistic heritage, No LS Lowry, No Joy division and no The Smiths :(
Also the damp weather of Lancashire and Cheshire means we have lovely lush grass just right for dairy farming and thus a wonderful heritage of cheese. :)
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Hi Geo,
Yes, that's right, creme freche (sp?) was the starter. I've added that as a note to the procedure. I've used CF as a starter for some semi-lactics, and it does make a good cheese. I might get some and mother culture a litre of it to get some ice cubes stored.
And graysalchemy, we really enjoyed our time in Manchester. The weather was very good for us. We went up to Edinburgh over the Easter weekend and it was a beautifully warm weekend the whole time. I think we just hit some sort of bizarre lucky streak with the weather. After that, we went to Nova Scotia (where I'm from originally) and seemed to have left our weather luck behind. Oh well, we got to see family, and that was the more important thing.
- Jeff
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We were staying just outside Manchester (a couple train stations out past the hat museum - which we went to see, indecently, and it was well worth the time),
- Jeff
Jeff, how does one "indecently" visit a hat museum? I'm almost scared to ask. It's not by only wearing a hat, right? Or is that a typo? ???
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You not seen what the youth of the UK get up to on a night out ;) ;)
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You not seen what the youth of the UK get up to on a night out ;) ;)
You got a good belly laugh out of me with that response! I've had a big mug of tea and a good belly laugh and I can now head to the barn and bracing cold ready for anything! Thank you both! ^-^
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Glad it made you laugh :)
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Hmmm, I think that was supposed to be "incidentally", I misspelled it and when I spell checked, it seems that's what I was closest to. However, indecently works too (with respect to how one does this at a hat museum, well, one simply does not wear a hat - can cause quite a stir I will tell you!) :)
- Jeff
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Hmmm, I think that was supposed to be "incidentally", I misspelled it and when I spell checked, it seems that's what I was closest to. However, indecently works too (with respect to how one does this at a hat museum, well, one simply does not wear a hat - can cause quite a stir I will tell you!) :)
- Jeff
;D ;D ;D
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I was always brought up that it was rude to wear a hat indoors ;) ;) even in a hat museum :)
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First signs of blue mould this evening, on both faces. Not a huge amount, but a number of spots, mostly towards the centre of each face. Brushed it back with a nail brush reserved for my cheese cleaning duties. Back to a pristine state. I find that brushing, rather than salt and vinegar, helps develop a nice rustic natural rind. Will see if that holds for this one.
- Jeff
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That's interesting, because I've just come from brine-and-vinegar washing the Cheshire I have which is a week older than yours, to find this post.
I'm hoping to make some more Cheshires this weekend - my brother is getting married in September, so I'm stocking up to take some - so I might make two from different recipes and give them different affinage treatments, to compare.
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Hi Geo,
That would be an interesting comparison. I never had much luck with salt and vinegar washing myself. Brushing doesn't prevent mould from growing, but it knocks it back. Eventually, the rind darkens and takes on a nice rustic look and then it seems that it doesn't progress and it becomes fairly trouble free, only requiring a brushing every couple of weeks or so. However, the rind is wild, and not very tasty, but it does influence the flavour of the inner paste in a nice way. I suppose it depends upon what moulds you have in your area, but I don't think there is anything particularly special about Auckland's mould. If you do decide to try two different rind maintenance approaches I would recommend following the same make procedure for both cheeses - that way, you can be more confident that any difference is due to the rind regime rather than the make itself. You could even make 3 more, so you could have two of each make procedure, each being cared for with a different affinage treatments, and then have a blind taste test, and then have people rank the 4 cheeses, and then ... and then .... :)
- Jeff
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Hah, you have a deal. :)
I'll start with 2, because 3 crates of milk equals two 26-litre batches of cheese. ;)
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Cool!
Look forward to the results. And photos.
- Jeff
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Updating the rind development on this Cheshire. It's now 6 months old, and down to 1068g. Probably won't lose much more moisture from here on out. This is recommended to age to at least 6 months, and I think another two is really recommended. Soon! It will be soon!
- Jeff
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And soon it was! We ended up going to visit a friend so took a wedge of cheese, and it was the Cheshire that moved first. :) The paste is very firm, a bit crumbly. Certainly not a moist cheese, but not overly dry, just the right sort of moisture level for a 6 month old cheese trying to be a bit more mature. The flavour is more than just a mild cheddar, with some wonderful sweet notes with bright highlights (not quite sharp like a vintage cheddar, so let's call it bright). It has a bit of a tang to the sweet bits too, not sour, just a hint of personality to it. Overall I'm very pleased. Might try and seal a bit of this as I think this is an excellent specimen for further aging, but then, I also think this is an excellent specimen for just stuffing my face with. Decisions, decisions.
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Ahhh, Jeff...a deep, mature, killer rind!
Wonderful looking cheese. Excellent effort. Very descriptive dialogue. May I bestow a cheese on you?
As always, you are the point of the cheese spear. Congrats!
As I type, I'm waiting for my Tomme #7 to ripen before adding my rennet. No Derby today...couldn't see where you cooked it so I bailed to the Tomme. Tomme #6 was done two years ago. ::)
-Boofer-
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Yes very nice Jeff, as always, 8)
Have another Cheese ;D
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Thanks for cheeses guys! I'm quite pleased with this one. The rind is thick, as it was never waxed, etc, but it is edible (just not the outer mould layer - wild moulds are not tasty despite the yumminess they impart).
Oh, Boofer, there's no cooking phase in that Derby make (nor is there a cheddaring phase, both are absent by design). Basically everything is done around 30 C. It will cool, and you raise it back to 30, so that sort of cooks it a bit I suppose, but all whey expulsion is achieved by stirring, cutting, milling, etc.
- Jeff
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Ok, got it. It threw me 'cause I'm so used to raising the temp. ???
-Boofer-
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And a cheese from me. That's an awesome-looking cheese. Your description of the flavour suggests that you have it spot-on for a Cheshire make.
I made a Cheshire from your recipe a couple of weeks ago, but flavoured it. I think it's time to make another, plain one.
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Thanks Geo. This make was originally posted by fied from Scotland, though I don't see her posting anymore. I've made it twice now, and have been pleased both times. Definitely worth adding to the rotation.
- Jeff