I'm new to cheesemaking and understand that varying time, temp, curd size etc can greatly change the resulting cheese. I made my first cheese, a butterkase, last weekend. When I was loading my form I was surprised at how flavorless the curds were. So I guess all of the magic happens in the aging process.
Is that true? Would the unpressed curds of a parmesan, a Colby and a Gouda all taste practically the same?
In my limited experience, curds have very little taste.... certainly my palate is not sophisticated enough to distinguish anything other than "sweet, neutral or sour".... That ability is helpful, however, and the same for runoff whey, if you don't have a pH meter.... Nowhere near as accurate, but it does give you some idea of where you are in the step you are on.... The aging process is where all the magic happens, for sure....
What amazes me (and will you) is that the basic recipe for most cheeses is the same.... milk, culture, rennet and salt.... Yes the proportions change, but the details of the make.... time and temperature at each step, flocculation multiple (read about it, IMO critical to understand it), curd size, and stirring, are what make the differences.... Certainly you have to have a culture suitable for the type of cheese and the temperature (meso vs. thermo).... and which culture you choose can make a big difference to the result.... but you will be amazed at how very similar cheeses (for example the huge variety of Cheddars) can be changed by the technique alone....
Bob
Yes, the vast majority of flavour development occurs during aging. The flavours are developed from the proteins and fats in the cheese being broken down by enzymes left over from the dead starter culture. Rennet (which is also an enzyme) will also develop the flavour over time to a certain extent. Finally, if you are growing mold, yeasts and bacteria on the rind of your cheese, they will donate enzymes that will develop flavour.
Proteins, fats and carbohydrates are long chains of molecules. Enzymes are kind of like keys that unlock certain links in the chains. Proteins, for example are made up of peptides (smaller chains). The peptides are made up of amino acids (the smallest building block of a protein). There are thousands of different shapes of peptides and acids and each one has a different flavour. Some flavours are great. Some flavours are terrible. Fat is the same way (though it is, of course, broken down into other types of structures). There isn't much carbohydrate left in a cheese after the whey has been drained, so we can kind of ignore that (though, it does play a part -- especially if you get alcohols being produced).
Each enzyme has a preferred environment that it likes to work in. Generally it is governed by temperature and acidity. By varying those variables you change the activity of the enzymes in the cheese and produce completely different flavours. Also keep in mind that all the bacteria in your milk has *different* enzymes that work differently, produce different protein and fat breakdowns, work differently at different acidities and temperatures and produce completely different flavours (literally from roses to rubber). If you are doing a natural rind, the molds growing on the outside inject enzymes into the cheese leading to completely different breakdowns and different flavours.
This is one of the reasons that raw milk is usually preferred by cheese makers. It contains a variety of bacteria, which increases the complexity of the end product as it ages. Many of those bacteria produce terrible flavours, but if they are just at threshold level of detection, it adds a perceived level of complexity without changing the major flavour components. Most producers of cheese with raw milk, still maintain whey cultures or mother cultures (or even use DVI cultures maintained at a factory) to produce the dominant flavours, but still want the characteristics of the elements in the raw milk.
For the most part, the flavour of the cheese will be dominated by the choice of starter culture and the acidity of the final cheese. However the moisture content, texture, aging conditions, etc still play a large role. Pretty much everything you do at the make is amplified at the end and very, very small differences at the beginning grow into huge differences at the end.