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Dear community,

I am new here, so let me introduce myself briefly. I am a trained biologist, almost 40, originally from Germany and now living on Vancouver Island in BC, Canada. This summer, we had a nice vacation and our AirBnB apartment had no TV, but a book about cheesemaking at home! Since then I am making cheese at home, with variable success but generally improving in my results. There is so much to learn and it is so much fun. I enjoy reading through the forums here! My favorite cheeses are Comte/Gruyere ... very old Gouda and Cheddar... soft, strong, stinky Camembert and runny blues like strong Gorgonzola. Well, basically most cheeses...

This weekend, I made Colby. I never tasted Colby before, but I am very excited to do so in a few weeks. I suppose it will be somehow between a Gouda and a young Cheddar.

I followed the recipe from cheesemaking.com almost by the letter. One deviation was that I did not have the in the recipe mentioned culture, I used 1/8 of a teaspoon of Meso II instead (it seems to be common for Colby too). I used slightly more than 2 gallons of cream top whole milk (2x 4 liters). The curd set very nicely, but I had a bit of trouble cutting the curds homogeneously... some were a bit to big, some too small. Cooking went smoothly, although I did reach the higher temperature a bit earlier than suggested, and then kept stirring until the next step. Washing the curds was also a tiny bit different, it might have took me too long to reach the coldest temperature... nevertheless, pressing was done with the suggested weights, and the cheese knitted nicely. I also hope that I did not overpress in the beginning, but I do not think so because the cheese kept loosing whey over the later pressing steps.

Behold some pictures!


The cheese is currently air drying for a day or two and looks quite good. It is bulging a little bit, but I am not overly concerned about that, or should I?

All the best,
JD

My Colby flattened and bulged just like yours (if not more so).... but it turned out tasty.... AC4U....

Bob

Thank you for your kind response Bob.

I am happy to provide an update. I cut into the cheese already quite a while ago, after it was around 2 weeks old. I was just too curious to wait longer. I could not be happier with the result, it is a very springy, elastic, soft, bendy, moist cheese. Creamy texture and a rather sweet taste. It is not very intense but very very pleasant. I never tasted a Colby before, but reading several threads in this forum (i.e. Rat Trap Cheese) it seems like we got very close to the desired result.

Kind regards!

Very nice!
Rachel

Another cheese for you!  BTW, you mentioned you are using cream top milk?  Where are you getting it?  Next time I come to Vancouver Island I'll probably make cheese with my dad so I'd like to get some if I can.

Thank you both for your kind comments! :)

Mike, as far as I know there are two options for cream top milk:

1) Avalon Dairy (the variety with the white lid) ... I think they only come in 1 liter glass bottles and are extremely expensive. They can be found in every Thrifty's or Save on Foods I think.

2) The Farm House grass fed milk ... it comes in a 4 L plastic bottle, and the only store I found it for now is the Whole Foods Market in Victoria, its priced reasonable.

There might be other options, but I am not aware of any more ...

Good luck!
JD

PS: Whole Foods also has various Goat milks and even Water Buffalo milk.

Cheers.  Last time I was there I tried to get the Avalon milk at the Thrifty's near my parent's place, but it wasn't available at the time.  Perhaps next time.  Though if we wander to Victoria it sounds like a good idea to try the Farm House milk.  I hope covid backs off enough that I'll be able to go this year...

nicely done!
Looks great - i love a good colby...

Welcome to the forum as well.

AC4U!

Trent

That looks really great!