I made a Reblochon last week to make up for my failed Reblochon/Trappist ale washed cheese. The recipe is here:
- 2.9L milk (2 litres of normal whole milk, 900 ml 5% cream Jersey milk)
- 1/16 tsp of MA4001 (my "normal" amount for a cheese)
- 15 drops CaCl2
- 12 drops IMCU 200 microbial rennet (I think)
- Ripen for 60 min @ 35C
- 17 min flocc time, 2.5x multiplier: total time 42 minutes
- Target flocc time was 15 minutes, but it was a bit slow.
- Cut curds vertically to 2 cm. Wait 5 minutes.
- Cut curds to 1 cm. Wait 5 min.
- Cook for 20 min (still too short... Why didn't I change my plan!?)
- Let curds settle for 5 min and then transfer to mould.
- Press schedule: 15 min no weight, flip, 15 no weight, small amount of weight for 30 minutes, flip, then increasing weight for 3 more hours, flipping every hour. Goal is to close the rind only. Temp was 30 C O_o (It's hot here). Pressing was done with cheese cloth.
- Depress and hold in mould for 12 hours in cave at 12 C. Remove the cheese cloth at depressing so as to try to smooth out the rind a bit.
- Brine in fully saturated brine for 40 minutes (20 min each side).
Edit: Forgot the yield :-P 431g or about 14.8%
Affinage:
- Day 0: Air dry for 4 hours at 30 C (Yeah... it's hot here). Think, "This is ridiculous". Transfer to cheese cave.
- Day 1: rub with geo from aging Caerphilly -- the idea is to wait until the cheese has absorbed the salt and *then* introduce the geo.
- Day 2: Cheese was wet like crazy, so every day dry it off with a paper towel. Got a pretty good geo bloom -- slimey surface of the cheese and tufts of white showing up.
- Day 3: Pat down the stupidly wet surface with a paper towel.
- Day 4: The geo was pretty well established (pretty much white everywhere). When geo is wet it has a weird tendency to build kind of "bubbles", so you get this slimey outer covering. Inside the outer covering it is dry and white. This was pretty much all over the cheese, so it was time for the next step: a salt rub with a coarse salt. I didn't measure the amount of salt, but probably less than a gram total. I took my cheese cloth and used the salt as an abrasive to rub off as much of the geo as I could.
- Day 5: Flipped the cheese and the rind was miraculously dry. Nothing else to be done. Not much geo to be seen.
- Day 6: Got a good geo bloom going again... Should probably wash the rind with 3 percent brine wash, but I was going out of town, so no time.
- Day 7: Insance geo bloom -- it looks like a Cambembert! Washed off the top and the sides. Will wash the bottom tomorrow.
So far it's looking amazing! I wanted to keep the geo on there it was so pretty :-) Thanks to Anne for giving me the clue I needed for the affinage: Geo is not salt terribly salt tolerant and b. linens doesn't show up until pH 5.8. You need to avoid too much salt until the geo establishes itself and *then* start the wash. Hopefully the b.linens will get going in a week.
I've had a couple more revelations as well: for natural rinds geo is your friend. It's amazing how different the rind is once the geo is really well established. I'm realising that my humidity is way too low on my Tommes/Caerphillies as well. I really need to dial in that geo at the beginning. I never would have thought that in 1 week I could have a rind like this.
Been washing with 3% salt brine every 3rd day or so after the initial salt treatment I did (Basically, wash one face and the sides one day, wash the next face the next day, wait one or two days). The 3% came from Caldwell, but I've also realised that Geo's salt tolerance is 3-4%, so this keeps it just under the tolerance. It's *just* starting to go rosey now after 3 weeks, though no great schmier. I was reading Alp's great washed rind thread (which I've lost the link to, unfortunately -- somewhere on this forum). This is a bit of a departure from that, but I think a reblochon probably is better without a heavy schmier :-) One thing that amazes me about the cheese is the texture of the rind: It's soooo smooth! I think the best way I can describe it is fresh pasta dough. Never had a rind like this before. The geo keeps on blooming while it's slowly turning orange. I have high hopes for this cheese.
The one thing that amazes me is how effective the yeast is at controlling blue mould. I've got another butterkase undergoing the same treatment and it's absolutely unbelievable. I don't have to do *anything* on these rinds. I think the key is making sure that the rind is fairly smooth (no stipples or sharp edges) and then just concentrating on getting full geo coverage in the first few days. I really want to make a Caerphilly now to try a rind that isn't washed (but my "cave" is full -- only 3 cheeses :-( ).
The other cheese in my cave is another butterkase that I did on the weekend. With this I'm taking a different rind treatment -- I took the bamboo mat from the Caerphilly that developed b. linens and used it unwashed. The butterkase is pretty high moisture (12.5% yield) and so it's maintaining a nice "slick" surface and it did, indeed, get a schier going as Alp suggested I would. I'm not washing it yet (and I have to go out of town for a few days, so it will be in the normal fridge until Saturday night :-( ). But I've got hopes that this will get a nice heavy schmier eventually. After 10 days of washing, I'll dry it off to see if I can get a nice alpine style rind (even though it's a high moisture cheese).
The red bacteria never really did get established on this cheese and I have a bit of a suspicion that I know why. In both of my failed reblochons I've done the make and then left it overnight before doing either a light dry salting or light brining. Then I wait for a few days and start washing. I think the issue is that the pH gets too low. One of the the things I noticed about my 2 butterkases is that they slumped attractively and bowed out at the sides. Even though the reblochon was at a higher moisture content, it retained it's shape. I think that's due to the acidity of the cheese. Later, the geo gets going and raises the pH to the point where the b. linens can get estabished. The b. linens *starts* but for whatever reason just ends up dying off pretty quickly. Both of my butterkases eventually ended up a nice orange colour and if I didn't tell you that butterkase #1 was *not* a reblochon, you'd could be forgiven for thinking it was. Even butterkase #2 (which I haven't tasted yet), bowed out nicely and when I dried it off, it just went a nice orange/red.
It is possible that this reblochon is infected with another bacteria -- the rind went kind of neon yellow. That may be why the b. linens died out -- it was outcompeted. It may end up being inedible. I'm probably going to give it a taste in a couple of days. Doing a Caerphilly next so that it's ready for when my parents visit next month, but I'll probably try another reblochon soon (or maybe I'll just keep making a washed rind butterkase instead -- which I guess is not far off a Tilsiter)