Hello there,
Here are two pictures of a cheese I made this past weekend. It's got some issues - I've been told that the curd might have been a bit cold when I pressed it - I didn't think so but I'm new to this so I'm definitely nobody's expert. :-)
I have it on the counter - the house is usually in the low to mid 60's (we like it a bit cooler) and it is on a rack - it is weeping a bit, mostly moisture forms on the bottom. This is the third full day sitting out after pressing.
Any thoughts, opinions and constructive criticism you can give is much appreciated.
Make it a great day,
Matt
Hello and welcome to the forum :-) Cheese making is an incredibly deep topic so there is always a lot to learn, no matter how much experience you have (at least in my estimation).
First, as to the weeping, that's totally normal. Cheeses drain whey for several days after they are made -- especially after you salt them. You will often see the advice to "dry the cheese for a few days at room temperature". The idea is that when you first make the cheese, it will still be draining and so the rind will generally be wet (basically 100% humidity). That's eventually going to attract a lot of problematic mold, so you want to keep it in a low humidity environment until the cheese stops draining. How long that takes depends a lot on the humidity, temperature and how you made the cheese. Often people get confused and think they want to "develop a rind" in this "drying process". You don't. That's just drying out your cheese in a bad way :-) You just want to keep the humidity down until it stops draining.
Again, depending on a variety of factors, the cheese may get "greasy" or "slimy" after a few days. Again, this is completely normal and basically desirable if you are going to go for a "natural rind". What it means is that wild yeast has set up shop on the rind of your cheese and are starting to get establish. A "natural rind" means that you leave the cheese open to the air and allow things to grow on the outside of the cheese. I tend to liken it to a garden. Imagine plowing up a field and leaving it. Eventually wild seeds will sow themselves in the soil and sprout. There will be things we want and things we don't want. However, it is generally impossible to dig up an empty field and have *nothing* growing in it. You drive yourself to distraction weeding it every second of the day. This is true of a natural rind cheese. There will *always* be something growing on it. Our job is to encourage the things we want while discouraging the things we don't want. In this way, the good things will naturally out-compete the bad things and we don't have to do very much work. The biggest mistake you can make with a natural rind is to try to keep it completely "clean".
Moving on to the knit of the curds in your cheese. Yes, there are some places where the rind did not "close" properly. Pressing is a somewhat complicated topic and it really depends on what kind of cheese you were making. But I'll give you the basics:
The ease with which cheese curds knit depend on 3 variables: acidity of the curd, moisture level of the curd and temperature. Largely speaking the importance is in that order. Even very dry, cold curds will knit if they are not very acidic. Similarly wet curds will knit easily even if the temperature is low. Acidic, dry curds won't knit easily, even if the temperature is high.
There are many, many different kinds of cheese, as I'm sure you appreciate. Some simple cheeses like a "tomme" cheese will always knit easily. You cut the curds to a normal size and cook them for a medium amount of time. The curds are drained at quite a high pH (low acidity) -- round about 6.0 or even higher. Then they are placed in the press. To be honest, you often don't have to press them at all, because the pH is quite hight (acidity is low). The cheese acidifies while it is in the press and by the time it is just getting a little bit tart (around a pH of 5.3 or so), the rind is completely closed -- often without any weight being added at all.
In contrast, a cheddar is made with normal sized curds, but often cooked a little longer. Then the curds are "cheddared". They are left to drain and "texture" as they sit. When they get just a little bit tart (again a pH of about 5.3), you "mill the curds" (cut into smaller pieces) and salt it immediately to kill off the starter culture and lock in the final acidity. At *this* point you press it. You need a huge amount of weight to press the curds because: 1) the curd is acidic 2) the curd has already drained most of the whey. So while the tomme requires very little or no weight, the cheddar sometimes needs hundreds of pounds sitting on top of it in order to close it. Heating up the cheese and pressing it again may help to close it, but basically you need more weight.
For something like a Parmesan, the curd is cut very, very small and cooked at a very high temperature. This makes them very dry. It is very important that you start to consolidate the curds while the acidity is very low, or else the cheese won't close without sitting a truck on it. Traditionally, Paremsan is made with a V shaped vat and the curds are allowed to sink to the bottom (called "pitching"). The shape of the vat presses the curds under the whey with its own weight. Then they slip a cheese cloth under it and winch it out of the vat and into a mold. The cheese is pressed at a relatively low temperature (essentially room temperature). This is crucial because it slows down the starter culture to almost nothing. This means that the cheese does not acidify very quickly at all. They press it under very little weight for a very long time (24 hours or more).
One final point to make about pressing which is often missed in introductory explanations of cheese making. Pressing does *not* appreciably drain whey from the cheese. You would think that it does, because it looks like a sponge. You press it and whey comes out. The problem is that if you press too hard, you close the rind too early and it locks whey inside the cheese -- a bit like a water balloon. The outside rind is very hard, while the inside is very soft and full of liquid. It takes time for the salt to reach inside the cheese and so the starter culture keeps chewing away at the sugars in the whey, making the inside of the cheese very acidic. This leads to a very crumbly, acidic and often wet interior for cheese. With a cheddar, you never have to worry about that, of course, because you drain the curds during chedaring. However, it is important for most other kinds of cheese. Never follow a recipe that says "X number of pounds for Y minutes". Every cheese is different. Instead, press until you just get whey beading up outside of the mould. If you get a stream of whey at all, you are pressing too hard. Flip regularly (for most cheeses) and just keep adjusting the weigh accordingly. Try to time it so that the rind closes in about 2 hours (for most cheeses), as this is when most of the whey has drained. Then you can pile on as much pressure as you want, for as long as you want. For a cheddar, you have to worry about getting air out of the cheese, so increase the pressure regularly, but you can't overpress a cheddar (and commercial producers literally put tonnes of pressure on them).
Quote from: mikekchar on January 14, 2021, 03:26:27 AM
Cheese making is an incredibly deep topic so there is always a lot to learn, no matter how much experience you have (at least in my estimation).
Mike, thank you for taking the time to offer detailed problem-solving. Have a cheese.
-Boofer-