I followed my heart on these ones (and maybe looked at a recipe for some of it). The baby blues I plan to eat fairly young once they have had a coat of mold for a week or two. Daddy blue will be aged until I get impatient or need room in my fridge. Daddy was pressed with 12 lbs of pressure and babies were pressed using however much 2 cans of tuna weighs. The blue cheese recipes I saw typically had really long forming periods but did not
"require" pressing. I am prepared for the consequences of my actions >:D. Happy new year you cheesers. O0
You have been busy... AC4U...
Happy new year! :)
Update-- There is just a tad bit of blue mold growing all around all three of my blue cheeses as well as what I think is a soft almost velvet layer of P. candidum. I am very excited!
When you press blue cheese you close up the thin gaps between the curds so there is no where for the veins of blue to develop. Hope they work out for you.
Thanks Al. I suspect that there will only be blue veins where I punctured the cheese which was a risk I decided to take for various reasons. All three of my cheeses aren't very thick so I am hoping that the punctured columns of blue mold along with the outer layer are enough to impart some flavor. Fingers crossed
The outer layer will form a rind and will have little to no taste. Sorry. It will still have a taste of blue though regardless of the veins or rind. I've done cambozolas in the past that didn't have a hint of blue but tasted like it. ;D
Here are my blue cheeses so far. They are 10 days old and I can see hints of b linens, geo, and obviously the blue mold too ^-^ I decided (because I am young and restless) to poke more holes in them so they would get more blue inside. I then tasted the little bit of residue left on the poker, which tasted bitter, blue moldy, and had the consistency of flour slurry. Does this sound right for a very young blue cheese?
Yes, that sounds about right for a 10-day old blue. It won't taste very good until it gets to 12 weeks or so -- though you don't have to let the blue develop for all of that time; you can bag it if you want to "stop" the blue at a certain point.
Totally agree with Andy. ;D
Look at this mold please... is that orange color alright? I originally thought what I was seeing was b linens on the surface, but it's actually some kind of mold. I scraped away some to be sure. Should I be worried? Is the cheese ruined!? If it's not ruined what should I do?
Thank you
With that much blue on the outside your worried that something else will take over ? ;D
Even if something else does decide to grow it won't get far , and it certainly will not ever ever ever add a flavor that will compete with blue .
And taste is all that counts in cheese .
Just keep ageing it out .
Quote from: Gregore on January 12, 2017, 03:14:31 AM
And taste is all that counts in cheese .
I just worry because I know some molds could release toxins on to my cheese e.g black mold. It doesn't matter how good it tastes if it kills me :o
Hard to be sure from the picture, but to me it looks like you've got some geo at work. It can be a yellowish color. It is normal and desirable for most mold-ripened cheeses.
I have tried looking for the post by Linuxboy about cheese molds where he mentions that cheese does not support bad mold or at least the secondary growth that leads to toxins .
Blue molds on other foods are not good for you but on cheese that is another story
I started at the oldest of his posts and spend hours looking but only made it 1 /10 of through all his posts
I got curious what the flavor/texture would be like at 20 days of ripening. The paste has become less grainy than day one and is still bitter. It seems the blue mold has behaved as expected and only grown in the puncture holes. I ate 1/4 of the piece and put the rest in a poor mans vacuum sealed bag to ripen further. My other blues are still maturing as before and I will sample them at the 40 day mark.
Why do you scrape it?
I have only made blue once, I am scared of the blues ;D
I scrape it off because the youtube cheese maker I watch scrapes off the mold before eating it. I noticed that the mold on the outside is extreamly powerful tasting in a bad way, but I do not know the "official" reason.
Jobe, my experience is that a blue cheese will not reach the "right" flavor until about 12 weeks of aging - this even though the blue may have ceased any further activity, due to lack of oxygen. It is an interesting phenomenon - at 6 weeks, my blues taste ... kinda like moldy bread. They are well blued at that stage, and I usually cut them in quarters and lightly vac-bag each quarter (lightly meaning that I stop the vacuum draw and seal it just as the plastic snugs up to the cheese), so definitely no further development of the blue from that point on. But at 12 weeks, magic has happened, and they have that piquant, sweet/sharp taste that I love.
For he purpose of first hand learning and research, I'm going to keep tasting at various unfinished stages. Gavin Webber, a Youtube cheese maker I watch and maybe idolize, made "petit blue" cheeses and he had them be very creamy and soft at the 40 day mark. I hope I have the same result!
Is this ok to eat, idk what happened but there are pockets. Smells really yummy at room temp. I think either I got some kind of an infection, or for whatever reason one side rippend much faster than the other. To be honest with you all, I did eat some before posting this and it tasted good. What should I do?
Not sure I would eat that. :o
Quote from: Al Lewis on January 29, 2017, 09:26:39 PM
Not sure I would eat that. :o
Me either. But I did anyway. The paste is creamy and very blue tasting. I have not past away yet, but I will let you know if I do :o
Quote from: DoctorCheese on January 29, 2017, 09:41:08 PM
I have not past away yet, but I will let you know if I do :o
You might want to entrust that task to some else. lol
Maybe you got some geo contamination that made the cheese runny like that, therefore it still tastes good. I am not sure though ;D
I cut open my "Daddy Blue" and it is perfect (for me). The paste is smooth, the blue flavor is strong but not overpowering. Very tasty.
That looks like it was pressed. Not a lot of gaps between the curd. Glad it tastes okay though. It's been my experience that you can get the taste of blue without the mold growing but the PR still puts the taste into the cheese. Go figure.
Looks like geo to me on the runny one , I would be it is okay to eat .
After reading david Asher's book and seeing how every cheese he makes uses wild cultures and how they all turn out edible , I have no worries about falling over dead.
As a culture we have moved into an era where we fear everything that is not packaged sanitized and kept in a controlled environment 24 /7 .
Your small cheese was well protected from exposure to bad things via blue mold that was aggressively keeping everything else away form "it's " food source .
So if it taste good eat it .