It's the most wonderful time of the year
It's getting colder and as a (south) German living in the US, my natural instinct for Raclette goes up.
I started cheesemaking not too long ago because I wanted to make Raclette cheese since the Emmi Raclette cheese I got in the first few years here at Whole Foods was rather disappointing.
Since I am a cheesemaking beginner, I'm happily taking any feedback on my posts here as I plan to post my progress in this thread.
My plan is to make several Raclette cheese's. It's probably overkill since I won't be able to eat that much and hold my weight, but if I end up with too much cheese, I'll spread the joy of Raclette among my friends and if some of my cheeses fail, I will at least hopefully learn something and have a little bit to eat.
Here we go, let's call this Raclette #1 made from the cheesemaking.com recipe:
7 Gal Milk - Pasteurized
Bulgarian Yogurt Starter
C21 Buttermilk Culture
Using a waterbath in my 32qt and 40qt pots for the first time (bought those for this recipe)
I'm using a stainless steel cake ring to imitate the wooden form that is traditionally used - see images.
As you can see, the cheese is looking good for all that I can tell. I will let it air dry for 2 days before putting it into my cake carrier and into the fridge for higher humidity etc.
I'm thinking of adding a few wet kitchen towels in the carrier so that I can be sure the Humidity is high enough.
I'll take it out every day to make sure no mold is appearing and I'll take a kitchen paper towel to remove anything I'm seeing.
Looking good! I made a couple batches in the last week (first time) following a recipe posted here. I used BA406 and am washing with cider brine. What are you doing for rind care?
I wonder how different the LR, BA406 and the BL403 end up being ... but I have to keep myself away from buying more supplies.
For the rind, I'm planning to go with the cheesemaking.com recipe. Keep it in the cake carrier or some other box and treat it with a light salt + BL403 scrub after some initial rest phase. Logistics wise, I bought a atomizer bottle (100ml) that I was hoping to use to spray the scrub on and renew the scrub every 5 days.
This is all new terroritory to me, but I'm treating this like an engineering project: Multiple cheeses for multiple tries to be failsafe :)
Here's the first update to my Raclette #1
I had the Raclette in a box for several days in my wine fridge (while it doesn't matter, the fridge has 11.5C and 85% RH). I flipped it daily in the box for 6 days and started to rub it with a light brine as per cheesemaking.com with a tiny pinch of BL430 starting yesterday. (Light brine = 1 cup water, 1 tbsp salt, 1 pinch B linens)
Now when I say I rub it, I really have it in prepared (for 5 days at a time) in an atomizer, flip the cheese and then spray it all around.
I imagine to see a little bit of B linens already after 1-2 days on one side, but that's probably more imagination...
Meanwhile I made a second Raclette cheese from 6 Gal of Milk (4 Whole, 2x 2%) using this recipe: https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,15900.msg126238.html (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,15900.msg126238.html)
I used a 26cm springform to press it. Worked reasonably well, although, since I used the bottom of the form as follower and left the form "open" (unsprung I guess), it went a lot wider - 29 or 30cm and hence the height could be a little higher.
I didn't press per recipe since it was extremely late already and so I ended up redressing only twice and then pressing with max weight for 8.5hrs over night. Surprisingly my pH was an exact 5.21 if I measured correctly (got a new SX811-SS food spike that I pushed into the cheese).
The cheese is drying on the counter now after brineing it for 12.5hrs. It was about 2800g before putting it in the brine.
I plan to leave this out only for 1.5 days and then putting it in the fridge.
Looking good!
Here's my first batch. Have two other batches ripening now as well. It's starting to get some color on the rind but I've never succeeded in a stinky B linens rind before so we'll see. I can get a nice bronze rind but it just smells like cider so we'll see!
@Bantams
Yours is looking soo nice and clean! What did you use for a form?
My first one is ripening in a cake carrier with a bamboo mat underneath. It seems to be the perfect humidity but I'm very worried about the dark mold spots you can see in my picture attached. I'm not sure if this is just my inexperienced judgement or real cause for concern.
My washed rinds usually develop mold spots at some point and it's never affected the cheese.
However, previously I only washed about 2-3x per week. Since reading more from Alpkase on here, I learned that the first 10 days are critical and the cheese really needs to be washed daily those 10 days. Then you can back off to 2x per week. So far it seems to be making a difference.
I use the 10" PAR molds from Cheese Connection, which make a 8-12# wheel. The little one is an 8" Tomme mold.
Small update on my Raclette cheeses.
The first one I posted here developed a lot of black and brown spots as well as a few orange ones. I'm very worried about this one ... I keep washing the rind every day with a light brine and some b linens (tip of a knife). As a beginner it feels like the cheese is developing a nice schmear, but I can't tell how good or bad any of that is.
My second cheese seems to be doing a lot better, that was the one made with Alp D in a springform with less height. My guess is that it's looking better since I was pressing differently and had a ph meter to verify. Anyways, I started washing it only 3 or 4 days ago and the rind starts to darken a little but except one or two tiny spots (as can be seen on the pictures), it looks clean so far. Keeping my fingers crossed and my thumbs pushed ...
I'll probably try to make two small Raclette cheeses in my two small forms today or tomorrow, I haven't decided on the recipe just yet, but I'd love to get two small ones that are easier to handle in a smaller box than the big cake carriers.
A week later.
#1 Pictures attached:
Still has all the mildew spots. Very sad about those ...
Getting an orange/yellow rind now it seems.
#2 Forgot to take pictures.
Clearly getting darker rind, luckily only "tiny" mildew spots. Let's hope it stays that way.
#3 Also no pictures.
I air dryed it for 2 days, now it's in a box and getting slimy. Yeah!
I'm still washing #1 and #2 2-3 times a week. Let's see how this keeps going
I'll give you my opinion of wash rinds. I really should continue positing my reblochon pics (which are getting pretty close to a year old now :-P). There are 2 ways to make a washed rind, but actually they are essentially equivalent.
B. linens shows up whenever: 1) the pH of the rind is high enough 2) the humidity is high enough 3) there is salt present (b. linens is weird in that it *requires* salt -- I've heard that washing with unsalted water is a way to combat unwanted b. linens, but I've never tried it). The humidity and salt are pretty easy to make sure you have. B. linens requires a pH greater than about 5.8 (caveat: various strains are different and the range can be anywhere from 5.5 - 6.0). You will notice that this is much higher than the pH of your cheese.
The way to achieve the required pH is to grow yeast on your rind. A fairly normal strategy for washed rinds is to start with a "yeast room". You either brine the cheese, or dry salt it over a period of a few days. Sometimes you do both: a short brine for half the salt followed by dry salting for the other half. Dry salting is said to create a thicker rind, so depending on what you are doing you might want to limit it. For what it's worth, I dry salt *all* of my cheeses now and I don't really notice a huge difference. As you are dry salting it (or letting it dry from the brine), you hold it in a relatively low humidity room at about 16 C. This is to get the yeasts going. The reason for dry salting over a period of days is that the yeasts usually only tolerate a salt concentration of 3%, so you want to limit the amount of salt at any one time.
Low humidity is important at this time because the salt is drawing moisture out of the cheese and it will stay wet (essentially 100% humidity). This is where you pick up the mildew, I think. The cheese should get slimy in a few days. You can also spray/wash it once with PLA or a Geotrichum/B. linens mixture to get it started, but it's not strictly necessary. Wild beasties *will* show up. It just depends on what you want. The slimy texture is proof that the cheese has got yeast growing.
From here you have 2 choices. You can go with Alpkase's regimen, or you can concentrate on growing yeast. Because Alpkase is making an alpine style rind (which is good for a Raclette), the idea is to wash the rind to get a schmear. You want to rub it enough that you get a bit of paste coming up into the brine. This becomes the food for the yeasts/b. linens. IMHO, it's important not to get too much salt in the brine (I stick with 3%) because you *need* the yeasts to flourish to get the b. linens going. Having more salt will slow the process. The advantage to this technique is that really *nothing* other than yeast and b. linens can grow in a medium where you are constantly rubbing up that schmear. The downside is that it will result in a thicker rind (which is actually what you want in an alpine rind). Once the b. linens gets established (which will be once the yeast has had a chance to increase the pH of the rind -- up to a couple of weeks), you can dry off the rind.
The other way to go is to let the humidity go down a bit and grow yeast on the rind (often geotrichum). The technique is that as soon as you see something growing, you wash it once. Then as long as what's growing is white, you leave it alone. Any time anything else grows, you wash it again. As usual, I think a 3% brine is probably about right for this application. Once you have full geotrichum coverage, you wash the rind again and you will pretty much instantly get b. linens. It's almost impossible to stop it because the pH will be high enough and then you introduce the salt and moisture that b. linens likes. The advantage to this technique is that you can have a thinner rind without a schmear. You can also do mixed rind cheeses (for a reblochon, for example) where you want a kind of even mix between geo and b. linens on the final rind. In my experience, it takes longer to do it this way (which is counter intuitive since you explicitly growing yeast to up the pH -- possible the schmear feeding the yeast is a real thing).
I've done both and they both work really well. Alpkase's schmear regimen is essentially foolproof, though. It also has the advantage that once the schmear is going orange, you can aggressively dry off the rind and the cheese will never crack. It will also close the rind for you if you left a few cracks at pressing time (some of those alpines are hard to close). The yeast method is better for more delicate, softer cheeses.
@mikekchar: Thank you so much for your answer, I was starting to wonder if I write this all for myself :)
I didn't know about the PH values needed to do a washed rind, I need to do a lot more reading before I can further enhancing my cheesemaking skills, unfortunately the job is keeping me on my toes and at the same time winter is coming and I know I'm not willing to spend $40-50/lbs at Whole Foods again for very mediocre Emmi Raclette cheese ... Hence I needed to try and take the chance of eventually failing or learning by failing?!
Luckily I have a PH food spike and was able to measure a 5.2ph after pressing of my #2 Raclette wheel that is doing great so far. So I hope the washing raised the PH enough for my B. Linens and the salt to do their work.
After I read your post this morning, I went to care for my cheeses and found that my #1 Cheese (my oldest) has grown some serious mold, all blue and dark mold on the front side that was currently drying up. The sides looked good, and had some shimmer of a whiteish tiny film of mold, looking a bit the way I imagine Geo to look like. Unfortunately Geo is the one thing I didn't buy yet, so I don't have PLA just here right now or can mix it up. The back of the same wheel which was sitting on a bamboo sushi mat was heavily molded with some white mold but also some very reddish spots.
I washed the back with brush and cleaned it up a little as the shmear seemed very dark, although with lots of orange (B.Linens). I've added several pictures that can show the different states and named the pictures accordingly. I'd very much appreciate if you could share some of your wisdom on that.
Other than that, #2 looked great and very clean.
#3, where I put some B.Linens (tip of a knife) into the curds seems to have tiny spots of B.Linens. I haven't washed that one yet, so I was very surprised to find those, but I couldn't imagine it to be anything different other than B.Linens given that I had that one in a container every since and it's only been 1 Week in the fridge so far.
I removed the blue mold from it and gave it a wash with my light bringe and hope it'll keep developing nicely from here on out.
To be honest, those are looking good to me. Nice wash. I'm no expert at all, but that looks just about perfect to me. Things *do* grow on cheese, so don't worry about it too much. With an alpine style rind you've got a *lot* of leeway. Just keep washing it off an it will eventually get b. linens. The only important thing you need to realise is that once you have the amount of b. linens that you want you need to dry off the rind. If you are too timid about it, the b. linens will keep working and will eventually rot out your cheese (been there, done that). So you'll want to reduce the humidity.
I have a theory that cheese with eyes in it actually originated from people drying out their alpine style rinds. To get the humidity down, the easiest way is to move the cheese to a warmer place. You are (not coincidentally I think) drying off the rind at exactly the same time that you want to get it into the "warm phase". At the same time, a schmear rind won't crack when the cheese expands.
In terms of geotrichum, I think that it generally shows up anywhere in the world as long as you have good conditions for it. It's literally everywhere (just like b. linens). Whether or not the variety in your area is a variety you want is a separate question. I made cheese for a year or two just with the wild geo in my area and got pretty good at summoning it from the air. When I finally bought geo, I was surprised at how easy it was to take care of the rind.
I kind of think of it like a garden. You can plow your field and then let wild seeds show up. You can adjust the watering, the pH of the soil, etc. You can weed the field. Eventually you'll have a nice garden with plants that you like. However, it's a lot of work. It's easier to plow the field and plant the seeds that you want :-) Cheese rinds are the same. In a traditional cave, they have hundreds of cheeses all with the same stuff growing on it. They have had the same mold growing in the cave for years and years and years. When they wipe the cheeses, they often wipe the new cheeses with the same cloth to transfer the molds and yeasts. They are planting the field and there is very little that needs to be done other than maintain the temperature and humidity. You can get a similar effect by buying surface molds and adding it to you milk. Or you can build it up from scratch. I find it helps to have a "sacrifice" cheese -- do one to get the things you want growing and then use it as a seed source for your next cheeses. The first one will normally be a bit difficult, but the subsequent ones are quite a bit easier. It also helps to keep a continuous supply of the same kind of cheese in your cave.
As for cost... I make small cheeses. My milk costs $4 per liter, so the biggest cheese I can make is 500-600 grams. It limits what I can do to some extent, but it also allows me to make more cheeses (theoretically). That way a problem is not such a big deal. Unfortunately these days my biggest problem is that I can't even *get* my milk. Lately only 2-3 liters shows up in the store per week and I have to fight other people who want it. So I think since Covid I've made maybe 10 cheeses max :-(
What % salt is your brine?
It looks like your cheeses are aging in an environment that is too high in humidity with too little air flow.
Unfortunately that seems to be a frequent problem when aging in small spaces (like a dorm fridge). I never had the patience to figure that out so prior to my cheese cave I simply vacuum sealed everything. Sorry, that's not very helpful...
Are you using an alcohol brine? I would try 4% salt with 50/50 white wine or hard cider and water for your brine.
Mikekchar and Bantams! Thank you so much for your answers, it's making my day to know that I'm not completely off!
I'll keep washing my Raclette cheeses for now and hope to be able to post further results soon.
As far as my brine goes, I'm always rather confused wether people refer to a 3% Salt solution by mass (3g salt to 97g water) or a proper salt solution with 3% dissolved salt in the solution... I had the same confusion about my CaCl2 and found different sites saying different things. So which one is right?
What I did though is to go with what cheesemaking.com mentioned, which is to use a tbsp of salt per cup of water and add a pinch (tip of a knife) of B linens. I put that in an atomizer and use it for 3-5 days to treat my cheeses. I've added a little bit of white wine in the last wash, but that was rather a tiny amount compared to the 50/50 solution you mentioned.
All three cheeses are currently in cake carriers, but I have a wine fridge standing right next to this mini fridge that has a fogger + controller ready to go if I want to create a humidity controlled aging space... I've been putting off building some more shelves for that fridge before putting the fogger back in action and putting the raclettes in.
I was thinking of setting a 85% RH and 11.5C environment in place and adding a 12V fan next to the fogger for easier distribution of the humidity. Maybe I'll finally find time for that soon.
CaffeineFlo, how are your cheeses coming along?
I couldn't resist trying one at two months old. I'm not sure that I've ever had real Raclette but I think it turned out really well. Nice fudgy/sticky texture, buttery and fruity, with a slight bit of funk. It melts wonderfully.
Solutions are generally w/v, weight for volume, so a 3% brine is 3 grams of salt in 100 ml of water. There is no need to subtract the weight of the solute (in this case salt), since the Na and Cl ions find their own space between the water molecules. Unlikely to make any difference, though!
@Bantams
That looks sooooooo beautiful!! Congratulations!
I haven't tried mine yet, but my birthday is coming up in ~2 Weeks ans a proper Raclette would make for a nice birthday dinner... maybe my impatience is overcoming me.
My #2 (Springform) is doing nicely. I barely touch it anymore and it's super super orange.
My #1 (Flexible cake form) has a nice orange hue on the rim but not so much on top on bottom. It's weird but probably ph and draining related.
My #3 that had B Linens in the curds is also looking nicely despite having avoided the ripening box so far and I vacuum bagged that one yesterday and put the #1 cheese in it's place to hopefully help there a little.
Again, I'm blown away by your picture. I'm sure the nice cheese aging room helped. Maybe I need to buil one myself after all.
Happy Thanksgiving
Small update, I'll be cracking open my Springform Raclette (#2) today in celebration of my 30th birthday. (Pics from two weeks ago attached). I have since dried it up pretty heavily after my fridge didn't work as I wanted and so it got a couple of cracks and the linen died down.
The vacuum sealed little Raclette is back in my wine fridge after the color faded pretty heavily after the vacuum went up.
My biggest and first Raclette still looks unchanged. Super weird how this one went.
Happy birthday! (a bit late I know) ...
would you mind telling us how your cheese tasted? A few pictures would be also very kind!
Thank you,
JD
Hi @jodud,
so sorry for the late reply. I had images but didn't like them too much and wanted to wait to get some more pics before posting my results.
I tried my Raclette #1 and #2 on Dec 11th and Dec 26th (yesterday) and had quite different results between these two weeks already...
Taste profile:
Raclette 1 (Cheesemaking.com recipe) is rather bland - which I attest to the B Linens that never fully got hold for whatever reason
Raclette 2 (Alp D recipe from here) is more complex, especially if you eat the rind.
Melting Profile:
Raclette 1 has a rather strange melting behavior. If you cut a slice and melt it under heat, the cut side becomes dry and doesn't really melt. The internals melt.
Raclette 2 makes things interesting.
During the first tasting, both cheese had similar melting behavior with only little melting happening and the cut side wouldn't melt as nicely. But on the second tasting, Raclette 2 had an excellent melting behavior, Raclette 1 improved as well and both didn't develop lots of fatty eyes as the commercial ones usually do.
I've attached lots of pictures, sorry for the otherwise dirty plate. I just love Raclette