I opened up a 3 week old Caerphilly made using "gently" pasteurized whole milk and Gavin Webber's make.
It looks like the pictures I have seen. It's creamy in texture..maybe a "little" crumbly but not really.
It's a little sour.. it has a slight bitter after taste and it has slight note of peaches. Yeah, peaches.
It's not nearly as salty as I expected it to be. In fact, I would not call it salty at all.
I wasn't sure if I liked it but after I let cheese get a little warmer.. I FOUND it growing on me. It's a little sour, creamy. As it melts in my mouth it tastes milky and the bitterness is gone.
I have another one aging in which I used raw milk.. I'll see how that one turns out.
Lack of salt will cause bitterness. Correct salt levels with also help halt the acidification.
Interesting.. this cheese had what I thought was a LOT of salt. The make had one adding salt to the top, pressing, adding more salt pressing, etc etc. Not to mention salt added to the curds. Well, I have a second one I made that I will try in a week or two. We'll see if they taste roughly the same.
Your curds may have had a lot of whey at the salting stage, effectively washing away all that salt.
Could be. I will say at room temperature it's really good. I do have to find a real caerphilly... so I can compare