A Dutch friend gifted me a girolle, knowing that I was into cheese making, and I decided to do a Tête de Moine, rind washed it and aged it four months in the cave. The girls couldn't stop producing rosettes by themselves (and gulping them down), and my wife said it tasted better than the store bought we had to test the girolle. I think I'll let it age at least six months next time, and I am definitely looking forward to try the tool with other cheeses (cheddar, sbrinz, montasio, etc.), as well as washing the rind in other ways (Appenzeller, shio koji, etc.).
Process
- pH targets: start 6.75, rennet (pH drop >=0.1), whey pitch 6.4, brine 5.4, flocx2
- Milk: 6G Jersey (raw). I got 12.5% yield. 5.5G store bought skim milk plus 64oz non-homogenized heavy cream should give good results.
- Starter Culture: 2.3g ThermoB, dissolve in 60ml non-chlorinated water, wait 5 min for it to rehydrate, mix and stir
- Ripen: Heat the milk to 90-95F. Check for pH drop and move on. It should take 45 mins to an hour.
- Adds: I did not use lipase. If you want to, dissolve 0.5g lipase in 50ml non-chlorinated water, let stand 20 mins, add to milk and stir. If your milk is not raw, add CaCl2. The solid food-grade one is way cheaper than the liquid one sold for cheese-making, just need to weight 1/3 or what the recipe calls for to water. So if you're doing 6G of store bought milk, dissolve 2g solid CaCl2 in 60ml non-chlorinated water, stir in and let it rest for a minute before adding to milk. Lipase and CaCl2 should be added 10+ min after culture, 10+ mins before rennet.
- Rennet: Dissolve as needed to set milk in half an hour in 50ml non-chlorinated water. I did 2.4g double-strength, whisked milk top-down vigorously for a minute to get that Jersey fat back in, then added dissolved rennet to milk slowly stirring constantly for a minute.
- Coagulation: Check flocculation after 10 mins, x2 flocculation, target is 30 mins, I cut at 26
- Cutting Curd: Cut center, then 1" in parallel. Long side before short one. Let it rest 5 mins, then use harp or whisk to slowly cut the curds down to 1/4" in another ~5 mins.
- Cook curd: Heat to 115-120F over 20 min, not too fast. Keep stirring slowly and continuously
- Maintain: Stir slowly in an 8 pattern until you hit pH 6.4, or ~20 mins.
- Settle: Pitch (press under the whey) 5 mins to form solid single mass so it's easy to drain whey and get the curds in the form.
- Press Under ~110F whey: 30-60 mins, x1-x3 cheese weight, flipping 3 or 4 times.
- Press outside of whey: 4-8 hours, until pH goes below 5.5. I used seed heating mats and got it out at pH 5.37. Start with ~3xcheese weight, go to x8.
- Air Dry: Leave in ripening box at room temp 6-12h flipping at least once. If you got it out of pressing at a low pH, shorten or skip this part.
- Salt: Brine 2-3h/pound (depending on form) at 18% salt by water weight (add 5g CaCl2 and 5ml white vinegar per gallon of water -or enough vinegar to lower pH to 5.3)
- Age: 50-55F 80-85H I washed the rind with the same liquid and brush I use for Alpkäse (50% water 50% white wine, 3% salt). It was going well but we had to leave the house for two weeks and I had just installed a mister instead of the normal humidifier. It looked great at first since it raises humidity much faster, needs less space in the cave and is easier to clean/maintain. But the water droplets it throws are too coarse so when we came back I saw the bottom fourth of the cave covered in dew. This cheese was the closer to the mister and had some mold plus the rind had actually softened in the side facing the mister. Thankfully the rind had established before that happened and a washed rind is pretty resilient so I washed it and let it be, in a couple of weeks it dried and after opening the cheese there was nothing particular in that sector of the truckle.It was in the cave 238 days at avg 52F and 85.7H
Pictures(https://i.imgur.com/IodN1Gx.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ej7F82c.jpg)
Only picture I have before splitting the truckle was this one i took for the topic about wash day (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,19261.msg147067.html). At this point the rind was almost done, a couple of weekly washes left.
Wow. Super interesting recipe. I definitely need to give this a try. I like the combination of 2x multiplier, small curd size and short cook time. It's so different than what I usually do.