I cracked open my first wheel hard cheese that I made and tasted it, and it has a bitter undertone that I don't think should be there. It's a colby that I waxed with beeswax and aged in my modified refrigorator cheese cave at around 48-55*F and 60-80% humididty for approximately six weeks. The taste reminds me of Munster cheese. It's not unbearably bitter, but it isn't what I expected it to taste like. Any ideas what would have caused this flavor and how I could avoid it in the future? Or is colby just like this?
It could be a number of things - not enough salt, too much acidity, bacterial contamination in the milk, etc. And some cheeses can go through a bitter phase but are fine after additional aging (say, 5 months total) but Colby should be good at that age.
Which recipe did you use?
I haven't had bitterness develop that early, but a lot of our cheese were becoming bitter after 5 months.... It turns out that Vegetable rennet was the culprit, after long aging it produces bitterness.... We changed over to Chy-Max rennet to avoid the problem....
Bob
I figured it could probably be a lot of different factors. I used New England Cheese Making Co.'s colby recipe. I'm extremely new to cheese making and I wouldn't say the process went perfectly, so I imagine that this might be a difficult thing to figure out. :-\