Hi all.
New cheese maker here. I've made a couple cheddars, a gouda, and pepperjack recently as my first few cheeses that need to be aged. What I did was to let the cheeses air dry on a mat, underneath a food net, with a ceiling fan blowing lightly above at around 70F.
They all took about 2 or 3 days until I felt like they were dry to the touch and a sort of rind was present in its young stage on each before proceeding. Then I vacuum sealed them and placed them in my mini-fridge cheese cave, which seems to keep a temp range of 55F plus or minus a couple degrees.
I also have the cave set up with salt and water cups to create humidity of around 70-75%.
Here are my questions if you can help me please:
1.) Is the humidity actually needed if I'm putting the cheeses into vacuum sealed bags? It seems like it wouldn't be able to have any effect but I'm just beginning to learn so I wanted to ask. My hunch is the humidity is only actually important when setting in non-sealed/waxed cheeses in the cave.
2.) Am I bagging up my cheeses too soon? I've been reading older posts on this forum today, and some of them have me wondering if I was supposed to let the cheeses sit naked in the cheese cave and then vacuum seal them after some time like that. Should I take my 6 wheels of cheese out of there bags? The oldest one went into the bag an the cave on 1-19 (white cheddar), 1-25 (yellow garlic jalapeno cheddar), 2-4 (gouda with fenugreek seeds), and the most recent today pepperjack). The gouda, I should mention, I did let sit for 4 days in the cave after the initial air drying, inside of a plastic aging box with a mat beneath it.
Any tips, pointers, and corrections of errors are welcome. Thank you!
1) Nope. Just keep the temperature good and flip every day. Flipping in important the distribute the salt properly. After a month or so, it's not really necessary to do very often, but I think it's just easier to flip everything every day.
2) As long as it's finished draining and dry to the touch, you're done. Last week I had an alpine style cheese get to dry in about 2 hours :-) It depends a lot on how you drained/pressed the cheese, how dense it is, how much moisture is in the cheese. What you don't want is to vacuum pack it and have it continue to leak whey into the bag because then you'll have to rebag it (though, it's not really the end of the world...).
Thanks for the info! I would have started to lose sleep wondering haha
Quote from: mikekchar on February 06, 2023, 12:39:21 AM
1) Nope. Just keep the temperature good and flip every day. Flipping in important the distribute the salt properly. After a month or so, it's not really necessary to do very often, but I think it's just easier to flip everything every day.
2) As long as it's finished draining and dry to the touch, you're done. Last week I had an alpine style cheese get to dry in about 2 hours :-) It depends a lot on how you drained/pressed the cheese, how dense it is, how much moisture is in the cheese. What you don't want is to vacuum pack it and have it continue to leak whey into the bag because then you'll have to rebag it (though, it's not really the end of the world...).
I have a new, but basically the same question.
I'm making a Havarti Dill cheese today, using the NEC recipe: https://cheesemaking.com/collections/recipes/products/havarti-cheese-making-recipe (https://cheesemaking.com/collections/recipes/products/havarti-cheese-making-recipe).
In the Q&A section, vacuum sealing is discouraged due to this being a higher moisture cheese.
If I were to let the cheese dry to the touch on the counter first, and then vacuum seal, would that work for this cheese, or should I stick with aging it inside of a tupperware with a cheese mat in it, inside my cheese cave?
Hopefully as I make my way further into the Caldwell book I will start to be able to think these questions through myself. Thanks for your help!
Hopefully somebody else will know because I've never actually vacuum sealed a cheese. It's kind of weird because Havarti is normally a rindless cheese, I think. Gavin Webber vacuum packs some higher moisture cheeses and ends up with some whey in the bag. He doesn't seem worried by it, but I don't know what the downsides are. I suppose there is a chance of it refermenting.
Thanks for the reply!
I did some digging in all the havarti related posts here and on the web, and it seems people have both adamantly said to wax/vacuum seal, and also to not wax/vacuum seal. Ha!
So, my plan is to let it dry to the touch. Age it for around a month in the cheese cave inside of a tupperware. Give it a brine wash anytime it looks like it might need it, and then try it at 5 weeks. If I don't devour the whole thing then, I'll vacuum seal it then.
The one reason I was thinking vacuum seal might help earlier on, is that this havarti seems much less stitched together than any of the other cheeses I've tried making so far, being the least pressed of the bunch. I though vacuum sealing might help with that, give it a sort of hug to help it mend better heheh
Here's what it looks like right now as it is drying. It seems to have not been pressed long enough due to all the craters (what do I call them?). I just followed the directions for the NEC recipe.
https://imgbox.com/xODqPMTQ
This cheese seems to have way more moisture than the pepperjack I did recently, and a bit more than the tomme style cheese too. The pepperjack I've vacuum sealed after maybe drying it out a tad overmuch, but it looks fine in the vacuum bag right now. The tomme style cheese is aging in tupperware in the cave and that is also doing fine. Hopefully that's an indication that either way will work out if I pay enough attention to it all.
Fingers crossed!
To me that doesn't look closed/knit well enough to age without sealing it one way or another. All those crevices are going to make it impossible to maintain a rind.
You could try closing it again, heat water to 160°f and immerse the cheese for 1-3 minutes, repress (if you already salted you may need to re-salt, but I am not real sure, I have only done this before salting when I notice a rind isn't closed).
If you don't want to risk that, vac bag it and keep an eye on it, if you start to see liquid around the cheese just pull it, dry it a little further and rebag. I have vac bagged a few cheeses that seemed moist and it worked out fine. You risk losing the cheese either way, but you won't learn how to solve the problem in the future if you try nothing :)
Quote from: B e n on February 21, 2023, 03:02:05 PM
To me that doesn't look closed/knit well enough to age without sealing it one way or another. All those crevices are going to make it impossible to maintain a rind.
This was my exact concern. So maybe it is best to give it a shot in the vacuum sealer. I've already salted it (brined for 4 hours), so I'll just do the vacuum seal once it's dry.
So in the future, if I'm following a recipe and the end result looks like this, I can just continue pressing and try to get it better knit instead of following the recipe blindly. Good to learn. Thanks for your input B e n.
After it's finished draining (about 2 hours), you can load as much weight on it as you need to close it. You just want to stop pressing before it gets too acidic. My general advice is to flip a lot while draining (my normal schedule is 15 min, 15 min, 30 min, 30 min, 30 min). This gives you lots of opportunity to keep an eye on the rind to make sure it's closing the way you want. I frequently still go too fast or too slow anyway though :-)
Quote from: mikekchar on February 21, 2023, 11:04:07 PM
After it's finished draining (about 2 hours), you can load as much weight on it as you need to close it. You just want to stop pressing before it gets too acidic. My general advice is to flip a lot while draining (my normal schedule is 15 min, 15 min, 30 min, 30 min, 30 min). This gives you lots of opportunity to keep an eye on the rind to make sure it's closing the way you want. I frequently still go too fast or too slow anyway though :-)
Thanks for the tips. I would have been too timid to add weight from what the recipe said. I guess the more situations I run into, the more intuitive the whole process will eventually become. I've just been trying to follow the recipes to the T, but it seems like I need to learn to improvise a bit here and there.
Well, I'll have a new chance to try it again this weekend. Probably not the same cheese though. Just in case this one works out I don't want to end up with double. I guess my dog would like that though haha.
I struggle with rind closure too. I am working under the assumption it's better to use more weight than the recipe calls for, than to end up with an open rind. I'm sure it has to do with the cold weather/kitchen, improper pH, and lack of experience. Sometimes I will have 2 small cheese from the same batch and one closes and one doesn't, it gets better every batch though. If I cannot get a rind to close I vac seal and hope for the best.
I haven't delved into taking ph readings yet since I was trying to just follow the recipes. It's on my list of equipment to buy next.
Cold weather recently definitely may have interfered. I do most of my cheese-work in the kitchen, but lately I have had to keep the door propped open as it's maple tapping season, and I am boiling down sap in the kitchen half the time in the background.
I've vacuum sealed all of my cheese so far except the tomme style cheese. I haven't tried any of them yet but they all look ok in their bags. The good thing is I am using resealable vacuum seal bags, so if I do see whey in there, I can just take it out, dry everything and reseal it.
I looked in on the havarti this morning and it does seem to be filling in a bit as it dries, although many of the craters are still present. I'll be sealing it up after work today...
My tomme cheese was very similar, but maybe not as bad, but it also filled in a bit as it dried. Now that one is aging in a tupperware in the cave and it so far seems to be doing well. No mold growth, although I think for the tomme style one I am hoping for mold growth of some type to develop the rind.
Either I'm going to get fatter eating all my successes or my dog is going to get fatter eating all my mistakes. Too many mistakes and I might just join him tho lol
Quote from: B e n on February 22, 2023, 02:01:32 PM
I struggle with rind closure too. I am working under the assumption it's better to use more weight than the recipe calls for, than to end up with an open rind.
It depends on what you are making. If it's something with a cheddar process where you drain the curds completely and then try to press them, you need practically infinite weight. If you are doing a more typical cheese where you are removing the curds from the vat and then putting them directly in the mold, then it means you are going too long in the vat and/or you are adding too much starter culture. The timing for when to transfer into the vat is crucial. I recommend making something like Jim Wallace's caciotta recipe: https://cheesemaking.com/products/caciotta-recipe These will close with no weight if you get the culture and timing right. Most recipes severely over press the cheeses IMHO, so if you are having trouble closing non-cheddars then you have a make problem, not a pressing problem.
I find that measuring culture from DVI cultures directly is impossible to do accurately/precisely. The recipes don't help because they say "1/2 tsp" or similar which can easily be off by 50% depending on the batch you have gotten from the manufacturer. I always make mother cultures now. In this case you just take a thermophilic culture (with bulgaricus) and make yogurt out of it. My nominal rate is 15 grams of yogurt per liter of milk, but this recipe is 12.5 grams because he want's *slightly* less culture. The improvements in my cheese have been quite substantial since I started doing that.
The only downside is that for "farmhouse cultures", you can't easily make mother cultures. They have both thermophilic and mesophilic cultures and you can't reasonably culture it in one go and get a good mix. For those cases I usually create one mother culture at 42 C and another at room temperature and then mix them when I make the cheese. Keep in mind that the room temperature one will take 12-16 hours while the 42 C one will take 6-8 hours, so you have to give yourself enough time.
So I'm not sure if this is what you just described...but the last 2 cheeses I have worked on, a tomme style cheese, and this havarti, have both had the same issue with some cratering and the rind not closing as cleanly as it could.
In both attempts, the curd did not set in the time it was supposed to on the recipe. I previously had been using double strength rennet but recently purchased single strength since most of the recipes were calling for single strength and not double. Both times I had to let the curd finish setting, longer than the prescribed time each time by 30 minutes (I just reset the alarm to 30 minutes both times and hoped the curd would progress)--so, the curds were in the pot for roughly 30 minutes longer both times. Would that amount of time be enough to cause issue? Would the switch to the single strength rennet have anything to do with it? My previous cheeses using the double strength did not have this much of an issue (gouda, cheddar, pepper jack).
Also, yes I have been measuring the culture using a tsp. Thanks for detailing how to make mother cultures. I was actually wondering how to do this and had not yet come across whether it was possible or not. Glad to learn it is. How do you store all the cultures? I just now read mention of being able to freeze them as ice cubes in measured amounts. My cheese cave is just a tiny fridge at this point. I know I will eventually need to expand, but for now I'm stuck with this and probably don't have a ton of room to store cultures, but if the freeze method is something that works then possibly...
As always, thanks for the insights!
Quote from: mikekchar on February 22, 2023, 11:26:43 PM
I find that measuring culture from DVI cultures directly is impossible to do accurately/precisely. The recipes don't help because they say "1/2 tsp" or similar which can easily be off by 50% depending on the batch you have gotten from the manufacturer. I always make mother cultures now. In this case you just take a thermophilic culture (with bulgaricus) and make yogurt out of it. My nominal rate is 15 grams of yogurt per liter of milk, but this recipe is 12.5 grams because he want's *slightly* less culture. The improvements in my cheese have been quite substantial since I started doing that.
That makes sense, it is really hard to measure something like flora danica by volume with any precision. Something like "1/8 teaspoon" or a "skewer tip" gives an uncomfortable margin of error. Most of the hard cheese makes I have done use a farmhouse culture (and I have only a few cultures), I will start being more meticulous about measuring culture by weight (jewelers scale) and taking notes on the results, maybe that will get me further.
I did build a press yesterday with the hope of having a better chance at closing rinds, but I will focus more on the culture and see if I can't get some success.
Quote from: WrongWhey on February 23, 2023, 01:37:55 PM
In both attempts, the curd did not set in the time it was supposed to on the recipe. I previously had been using double strength rennet but recently purchased single strength since most of the recipes were calling for single strength and not double. Both times I had to let the curd finish setting, longer than the prescribed time each time by 30 minutes (I just reset the alarm to 30 minutes both times and hoped the curd would progress)--so, the curds were in the pot for roughly 30 minutes longer both times. Would that amount of time be enough to cause issue? Would the switch to the single strength rennet have anything to do with it? My previous cheeses using the double strength did not have this much of an issue (gouda, cheddar, pepper jack).
Are you using calcium chloride?
Quote from: B e n on February 23, 2023, 02:55:39 PM
Quote from: WrongWhey on February 23, 2023, 01:37:55 PM
In both attempts, the curd did not set in the time it was supposed to on the recipe. I previously had been using double strength rennet but recently purchased single strength since most of the recipes were calling for single strength and not double. Both times I had to let the curd finish setting, longer than the prescribed time each time by 30 minutes (I just reset the alarm to 30 minutes both times and hoped the curd would progress)--so, the curds were in the pot for roughly 30 minutes longer both times. Would that amount of time be enough to cause issue? Would the switch to the single strength rennet have anything to do with it? My previous cheeses using the double strength did not have this much of an issue (gouda, cheddar, pepper jack).
Are you using calcium chloride?
Yup! 1/2 tsp per 2 gallons of milk, mixed into a 1/4 cup of water first before adding to the milk. Does that sound about right?
WrongWhey, it's hard to say what's causing your problems. Basically from the start of the cheese making process, when you add the culture you entire goal needs to be to get the curds in the mold at the right acidity level and the right structure. If you get that right, then everything else is easy. So you have to measure the culture correctly, ripen the milk appropriately, add the right amount of rennet, wait the correct amount of time, cut the curds the right size, let the curds heal, stir appropriately, raise the temperature (if you are) at the right speed, and judge when to stop. Get any of those things wrong and it makes everything else more difficult. If you get something wrong and don't notice it, then it all starts to snowball so that by the time you get to pressing, it's impossible.
The biggest places I think most people go wrong are:
1. Usually too much culture. This causes the milk to acidify too quickly and by the time you are in the mold, everything's gone wrong.
2. Not renneting correctly. Rennet is rated by strength. "Single strength" rennet is usually about 200 IMCU per ml, but some producers are as low as 150 and others are as high as 220. For "double strength" it's even worse. Usually 300 all the way up to 900 are typical values (4.5x typical "single strength"). You want to use between 35 and 45 IMCU per liter of milk (lower values for raw milk). Normally recipes are "x teaspoons", which are absolutely useless instructions. For normal single strength rennet, use 4 drops per liter of milk and you will be quite close.
3. Not coagulating to the right level. Your milk will coagulate at a speed depending on: the amount of rennet, the temperature of the milk and the acidity of the milk. More of anything makes the milk coagulate faster. Measure how fast it's going because it's important. This is called the flocculation technique: float something like a wine or soda bottle cap on the milk right after you add the rennet. Time how long it takes before when you try to spin it, it doesn't spin (I wait until it leaves a bit of an indentation in the milk when I remove it). Normally that's about 12 minutes. The total time you wait is a multiplier of that. For most cheeses it will be between 2.5 and 3.5. So if you are going for 3.0, then total waiting time should be 36 minutes.
If it's taking you a long time to coagulate, then there is a problem either with your milk or your rennet. If you are using pasteurised or raw milk, then the problem is *probably* your rennet. There are a couple of other concerns if you are using fresh milk from a single cow, but if you aren't you can ignore that. If you are using pasteurised milk, then you almost certainly must add calcium chloride to the milk. If you are buying the liquid from the same place you bought the rennet then use 5 drops per liter of milk.
The most common problem with rennet is usually diluting it with water that contains chlorine. You often see advice of boiling water and letting it cool, or just letting it sit out or blah, blah, blah. For lots of technical reasons all of those things can fail. Go to the store and buy a bottle of water. Those are disinfected with ultra violet light. Use that for diluting rennet. You can also use distilled water.
If you are sure your rennet is fine, then you may have added too little culture. Extending your time is fine (because the milk is acidifying slowly).
4. Wating for a "clean break". That term is essentially nonsense in the context it's usually used. Wait for the multiplier for the cheese you are using. If you don't know, then 3.0 is a good default.
5. Homogenised milk. Basically the fat is all screwed up and coating the protein. The rennet can't get to it. This means the curds shatter when you try to stir. I use this technique when using homogenised milk: Cut at a multiplier of 2.0 about twice the size you ultimately want, but don't stir. Stir once at a multiplier of 3.0. Wait until a multiplier of 4.0. Stir once. Very slowly stir about once every minute for the rest of the time. This will stop your curds from turning into mush/powder. You just want to stir to prevent matting. Because the curds are fracturing all the time, they are draining quickly. You don't have to stir all the time with homogenised milk.
6. Case hardening your curds. Some recipes raise the temperature while stirring (sometimes called "scalding"). If you raise the temperature too quickly, you cause the outside of the curds to harden quickly, trapping the whey on the inside. His causes lots of problems. When it says to raise the temperature by 6 C over 30 minutes, it really *does* matter if you miss your goal by a single degree. Basically, If I'm doing something like this, I want to raise 1 degree every 5 minutes. With my lowest temperature setting, I will increase 1 degree in 1 minute and then turn off the heat and wait 4 more minutes. I do that 6 times. This works well for me. But if you crank it up those 6 degrees in 2-3 minutes (which is really easy to do), you *will* have problems.
7. Not knowing when the curds are "done". For most cheeses the curds are "done" when you hit the right acidity level and the structure is even all the way through the curd. Take a curd. Break it apart with your fingers. Does it have an even texture all the way through? If yes, you are done. If it's "juicy" inside, you are not done. If it's hard and bouncy, then you have gone too far. For acidity, you should be thinking about your total time since you added the culture and the temperature. If you are adding extra time because your curds don't have the right texture, then you risk over acidifying the curd. It's crucial to cut and stir the curds correctly so that the text is ready at the right time. I usually err on the side of acidity, though. Even if my curds aren't quite done, I'll go into the mold early if I think I'm going too slowly. Judge this mostly from your flocculation time.
8. Mishandling the curds when getting them in the mold. Draining the curds into a colander and then putting that in the mold is not usually the best technique. It's fine for some cheeses, but not good for others. It adds air between the curds and cools them off too quickly. Your default technique should be to let the curds fall to the bottom of the pot and then ladle off the whey. Gently compress the curds into a mass (called a "tomme") and do your best to get that into your cheese cloth. Sometimes people put the cheese cloth in the pot first, manage to get it in underneath the curds and then drain the whey (or lift the curds out with the cheese cloth). I usually just take it out in 2 or 3 big clumps.
The big advantage to this technique is that there is no (or very little) air between the curds. When the whey drains out, the curds are sucked together and close with absolutely no need to press them. There was never any air between them in the first place, so there is very little way air can get in to make a gap.
9. Over pressing too early. Pressing the cheese squeezes the whey out. However, it squeezes the whey out of the outside of the cheese first. If you press it too hard, the outside of the cheese closes and leaves your cheese a bit like a water baloon. You want to close the rind in about 2 hours, and no earlier. As soon as 2 hours are up, feel free to put blocks of uranium on it to close it.
Most cheeses need very little weight. I've closed some tommes with no weight as all (but usually I end up putting about the same amount of weight at the cheese -- in my case about 5-600 grams). I don't think I put more than 2 kg (about 5 lbs) on *any* cheese that I make. You need to up that for larger cheeses, but if you are putting more than 3x the weight of the cheese on most cheeses, you know that you have a problem in your make. The exception is anything you've cheddared. That needs a truck full of trucks on it. Even Parmesan cheese, made professionally, puts less than half the weight of the cheese on when pressing. The vast majority of cheeses made at home don't really need a press.
I hope this book of a post helps :-)
Excellent post Mike, thank you for taking the time.
Quote from: mikekchar on February 24, 2023, 05:15:55 AM
I hope this book of a post helps :-)
Mikechar,
thank you so much for putting all of that into words for me. You've opened up my mind as to all the things I need to become more conscious of. I'm seriously printing this post out to have with me as I prepare to make my next few cheeses.
Have you written a book yet? If not, gosh I hope you do. Put me down for a copy!
I'm not sure if I'm about to do this right but, if I could give 10 cheese to you I would. AC4U!