In addition to making my first Camembert-style cheese just over a week ago, I made a small blue 1 week ago today. It is a very small make, just 1 gallon; I mostly followed the 200 Easy Cheese Roquefert recipe, with a little bit of Caldwell thrown in.
Below are pictures showing a good start to the blue development, before and after piercing.
Question: keeping in mind how small this is ... about how long should I plan to age it?
Lookin' good, take a cheese for your bravery!
Thanks, Stinky! I was modifying my original post while you were looking at it -- a nice surprise to finish editing and see a response already!
Well, I'm waiting around for my new topics to be posted, and saw this and dropped in.
Age it until you simply can't resist it anymore + 14 days. ;-)
I cut and vac sealed my last 4+ pounder at 7 weeks, and it was plenty blue. I'll probably cut the one I have going now at 5 to 6 weeks.
Larry
Quote from: Danbo on February 11, 2015, 06:06:56 AM
Age it until you simply can't resist it anymore + 14 days. ;-)
Danbo, you crack me up! :)
;)
Andy----looking real good---keep us posted---wish I had the courage to try blue ;)
Qdog
It is coming up on two weeks now ... very, very blue on the outside, and the smell is not entirely encouraging -- not so much a blue smell as just an off smell. No, not ammonia, I think -- but I have had a cold the past week, so nothing has smelled quite right ... I hope that's all that's going on.
I'll pierce it again tomorrow, and assuming I get a little paste protruding as a result, I'll see what it tastes like. I'll try to post a picture as well. I need to go get a trier (or apple corer or whatever) ... I'm dying to see what it looks like inside.
Unless you have a nice rind developed, tomorrow may be way too soon to pierce it.
Al, say more about that -- a nice rind in what sense? It does not have a rind in the sense that a tomme or such would have, but it certainly is about 60% covered in blue. Is that what you mean?
In any case, I went ahead and pierced again. I WILL post more pictures ... SOON! Really. I promise ...
Rind on a Stilton is a complete covering of the cheese with various molds which have dried to form an outer shell. It isn't particularly thick or as dense as those on hard cheeses but that is due to the fact that this is basically a soft cheese, no pressing. It should be dry enough that you can run your hands over it without picking up any moisture. It actually seals the cheese from any air, or other nasties, entering the body of the cheese. The creameries in England wait 5 weeks for this to occur before piercing. I'm not suggesting we should do the same as our smaller cheeses tend to develop quicker but you should wait until that "rind" is formed. As for it's appearance, it can be a variety of colors dependent upon what molds have taken up residence on the cheeses surface. B Linens are everywhere and usually get into the act at some point. You know there will be blue in there and there's a good chance of some PC showing up if you've ever made brie, camembert, or any of the other soft ripened cheeses. Here are a couple of pictures of my blues that have totally different colored rinds but were done with the same recipe. Although their appearance is completely different they bot have the same attributes when it comes to protecting the cheese. I've included a shot of the first cheese after cutting so you can see the edge of the cheese and the rind development. Not as hard as a cheddar but a rind none the less. You can also see the color differences created by which mold was more prevalent in the cheese. The first picked up more b linens then the second one has. I had been making epoisses and tallegios when I made the first one so the b linens were prevalent in my cave. I had just washed out my cave with chlorine before making the second so they weren't there with the exception of those in the air everywhere. I'll come back and put a picture up for comparison after I cut the second cheese. BTW If you have slight openings in the surface after smoothing the rind development with fill them in and smooth the surface for you. The first cheese was never smoothed as the surface had dried out too soon for me to smooth it. It still completely leveled the surface of the cheese filling in the small gaps that were present at the time.
I wish that I'd made a blue like that. :-) AC4U!
Beautiful cheese, Al!
BTW, I am not following a Stilton recipe ... so not sure I should be looking for that sort of rind ...
Can't see why you still wouldn't want it.
Quote from: Al Lewis on February 18, 2015, 10:16:14 PM
Can't see why you still wouldn't want it.
Since this is my first foray into the blues, I have no idea -- but the recipe in the Caldwell book, upon which this make is partially based, calls this a "rindless blue." Of course, whether I am even close to doing this the way Caldwell intended is a matter of great doubt!
Here it is on day 15:
See, there's the problem. You need to read that book to the molds. LOL That is very curious as I don't think I've ever seen a cheese without a rind except cottage, ricotta, and the like. Well, rindless or not, it looks great! AC4U Andy ;)
Aha, I see the problem -- I haven't been talking to the molds on this blue.
By contrast, I was caught by my wife crooning something addressed to "my fuzzy little babies" as I was checking on the camemberts that I made about the same time as this blue. :-[
Thanks for the cheese!
Just read the recipe, I have the book on my Kindle, an wow! Just a few differences from stilton but I really got surprised when they said to wax it. Also, the recipe just after that doesn't look much different. Also the use of lipase. I was told that was reserved for hard Italian cheeses. I would be interested in knowing what they are describing when they say "rindless".
New development, and I don't think it is what it should be. This blue has been feeling increasingly squishy ... and when I pulled it out to check on it, it had leaked! I went ahead and cut it open; clearly I was starting to get a sort of slip-skin, which is ironic since I wasn't trying for a Cambozola. Would the blue have made it start to get oozy? I think there is also some geo under/alongside the blue -- maybe that is the culprit? It has been in the 50˚F cave all its life (3 weeks) -- should it have gone to the cold fridge at some point?
In any case, I can see some flecks of blue where I pierced, but clearly the holes did not stay open long enough to do too much. Flavor-wise, it is a bit bitter, not much blue. I have put it in the cold refrigerator to slow down the development of the ooze, and with the faint hope that maybe it will develop a bit more.
So, help me with the post-mortem analysis. Maybe I need a drier curd? Maybe I cross-contaminated the blue with the camemberts I am also tending? Maybe ... ???
Andy, I don't think most blue strains are that proteolytic. Which strain did you use? My guess would be that this is a result of the geo. 50°F shouldn't have caused a problem. I age mine around 55.
What humidity were you running? In addition to putting it in a cold refrigerator, would it help maybe to start drying it out a bit at a lower humidity? Maybe wrap in cheese paper. It's hard to guess whether drier curd would help. I'm thinking more along the lines of lower humidity during aging so molds won't get so carried away.
If you can keep it together for a couple more weeks in the cold frig it should develop at least a little more blue character. Call it a Cambozola and brag about it. :)
In looking at the 200 Easy Cheeses recipe, if you used a 1-1/2 hour set time, 1 inch cut, no stirring, and ladled the curd directly into the mold, then yes, curd too wet could have exacerbated the problem. Small size probably was against you also. Look at step 14 in the 200 cheeses recipe discussing humidity.
If you want to develop a funky rind like Al does, use a Stilton recipe with an additional draining and milling step. And go for broke size-wise on your next one. :)
HTH,
Larry
Quote from: awakephd on February 19, 2015, 02:13:07 AM
]I was caught by my wife crooning something addressed to "my fuzzy little babies"
Is the a variation on, "My Melancholy Baby," by William Frawley? --- Come to me, my fuzzy little babies. Cuddle up and don't be blue...
Maybe that's why there is trouble with the blue cheese!
Larry, thanks for the helpful feedback. Here are my notes on the make -- as you can see, I introduced some stirring into the recipe, based on the Caldwell book:
Add cultures when milk is at 70-80°; add CaCl; bring to 90°.
Add rennet. Wait 90 minutes.
Cut into 1" cubes; rest 10 min.
Stir gently; rest 10 more min.; repeat 3 times (40 minutes total after cut).
Ladle curds into cloth-lined colander; drain.
Add 1/4 tsp salt and mix.
Transfer curds to 4" form.
Turn every 15 minutes for 1 hour. Turn every hour until bedtime.
I think I will either try a Stilton or a Gorgonzola for my next blue attempt ...
Quote from: Frodage on February 25, 2015, 03:29:25 PM
Quote from: awakephd on February 19, 2015, 02:13:07 AM
]I was caught by my wife crooning something addressed to "my fuzzy little babies"
Is the a variation on, "My Melancholy Baby," by William Frawley? --- Come to me, my fuzzy little babies. Cuddle up and don't be blue...
Maybe that's why there is trouble with the blue cheese!
I'm afraid this was more of a tuneless crooning, but setting it to music is a great idea!
Salt level probably also contributed to your problem. I weighed a couple kinds of salt I have around here and found that 1/4 tsp of canning salt weighs about 1.75 G. 1/4 tsp of Morton Kosher salt weighs about 1.5 G. Assuming you got about 450 G of curd out of 1 gallon of milk, your salt levels were in the neighborhood of 0.3% to 0.4%.
My Gorgonzola recipe calls for 4.0% of the formed cheese weight in salt, applied over a couple days. That's a factor of 10 more salt. Most blue recipes I looked at call for between 2.2% and 4% salt levels.
Low salt is probably a significant factor in your runaway molds/yeasts.
Larry
Oops -- forgot to include dry-salting another 2-1/4 tsp of salt after 24 hours. That was based on a calculation of 2.5% salt by weight. But I do wonder if I nevertheless came out too low on salt -- it tastes like it might be low on salt. Maybe I lost too much off the sides ...
No, if you got another 2-1/4 tsp on it, even if some fell off I think you're in the right range. :)
You just ended up with the small cheese version of Elephant's Foot. :)
Larry
Quote from: awakephd on February 25, 2015, 02:45:24 AM
Maybe I cross-contaminated the blue with the camemberts I am also tending? Maybe ... ???
Did you isolate this one and/or the cams in a mini-cave? The candidum wasn't in the recipe so it had to come from somewhere. I'm still learning how molds "operate" and the other comments here make sense including lack of salt. I made the same cheese with the same recipe 2 months ago but instead of 1" pieces I cut mine into 1/2". Caldwell gives a very wide range for some reason (3/8 to 1") so I wonder if the smaller make and the larger curds resulted in too much salt lost in the whey?
I would say the PC took over the exterior and worked its way in just like it does on brie. Strange because normally the PR is the stronger of the two and takes over everything else.
I have to say that it hasn't really looked like PC ... but there is some geo type appearance. In any case, now that it has been in the cold fridge, the softening has stopped, but the blue development appears to be continuing.
I'm anxious to try another blue ... just got to find the time ...