Since Clover gives cow milk and not goat milk, I had to make vaca al vino instead of cabra al vino. ;D The make was Thursday, pressed until I got home from work on Friday, and then plunged into wine. It's out now until the morning, and will then go back in for another drink.
what a beauty!
Gorgeous color! How long did you actually soak it for - 24 hours?
Any chance you could post a recipe? I have a bunch of blueberry mead I made that I was thinking of doing something similar with.
The recipe is based on the one for cabra al vino in Tim Smith's book. It was adapted to fit my milk and schedule. So here is vaca al vino. ;)
3 gallons warm whole Jersey milk, 1 gallon slightly skimmed warmed Jersey milk, combined at temperature 88F.
Add 3/16 tsp mesophilic culture and ripen for 30 minutes.
Keeping at temp, add 1 tsp calcium chloride and stir.
Add 1 generous tsp rennet and stir.
Floc time was 12 minutes, used a multiplier of 4.5 and cut curds (1/2 inch) at about 54 minutes.
Let rest 5 minutes, then drain about 1/3 of the whey. (There wasn't much whey at this time; 8-10 cups was taken off.)
Add enough 175F water to bring the temp to 90F. (I added gradually and stirred gently.)
Keep at temp for 10 minutes while stirring gently. (No need to stir continuously.)
Continue adding 175F water gradually to bring temp to 98F. Maintain at 98F for 15 minutes while stirring enough to prevent matting.
Let curds settle in pot for 30 minutes while maintaing temp.
Strain off whey, leaving drained curds in pot.
Mill curds into about 1/4" size and blend in 4 tablespoons salt.
Place curds in cheesecloth lined 8 inch tomme mold, and press with 30 pounds pressure (total, not psi) for 20 minutes.
Turn, redress, and press at 85 pounds for 6 hours.
Turn, redress, and press at 85 pounds for 10 hours. Repeat.
Remove from press, place in container, and cover generously with red wine. (The cheese does not float as it would in brine.) I used an inexpensive California red that we like.
Leave for 24 hours.
Remove and air dry overnight.
Return to wine bath for 24 hours.
Remove and air dry.
Age for 3 months at 50F and 80-85% humidity. Wipe with brine as needed to maintain rind.
My vaca al vino is now taking its second wine bath. The wine seems to soften the cheese. It certainly adds a lovely color and aroma. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Oh, after the cheese comes out of its last bath, I will pour the soaking wine over Mlle Clover's morning grain. :)
I think I'll do that to one of my cheddar's (the one with the bitter defect) and see how I feel about it. The blackberry wine I make should go nice with it.
Wow, that seems like a lot of weight, though I'm admittedly very green to this whole cheese making thing. Thanks for the recipe.
This is total weight, not psi. The mold is 8 inch diameter, so the psi on the first pressing is less than 1. The final pressings are under 2 psi. Not so high really.
The cheese now feels moist, but not not dense. I'll try to post another photo tonight.
Here it is after the second soaking and air drying for a day and a half. It's weighing in at 5.5 pounds. The color can't be much more than rind deep. You can see the lighter color of the underlying paste on the upper edge where a little particle came off.
Oh yes, Clover seemed to like her little nip of wine. ;D
Wow! That will be fun cheese to serve to impress company!
Thanks for the recipe Cloversmilker, I will go and get some red wine now and will try the recipe on sunday.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 14, 2012, 02:55:09 PM
This is total weight, not psi. The mold is 8 inch diameter, so the psi on the first pressing is less than 1. The final pressings are under 2 psi. Not so high really.
The cheese now feels moist, but not not dense. I'll try to post another photo tonight.
Just to make sure I'm not confused, which I probably am, the weight for my press is just putting barbell weights on top of the follower (more or less). Is that what you're talking about?
Weight of barbells = total weight. If you're making a smaller wheel with this recipe, you will want to decrease weight accordingly.
Hi smellysell,
Although most recipies you are likely to find in books will list how much weight to press your cheese. Unfortunately, what is really important to keep things similar from one make to the next is how much pressure to put the cheese under. Now, the two are related, but not the same thing. Weight is what we're used to thinking of, pounds or kilograms (actually, pounds measures weight and kilograms is mass, which is why your weight changes when you go to the moon, you shed pounds, but your mass doesn't, you have the same kilograms. This makes sense if you think of the two kinds of scales we have, spring scales and balance scales. Pounds is measured by how far gravity stretches a spring and mass by how many standardized things you need to stack on the other side of the balance scale - hmmm, I'm digressing).
Anyway, for the practicle cheesemaker on earth, pounds and kilos are the same thing. Pressure, however, encorporates information about how that weight is distributed over space. So, if you have rectangle mould of 4 inches wide by 6 inches long by some amount high (the height doesn't matter), then the area of the follower is 4 x 6, or 24 square inches. If you put 24 lbs on top of that follower, you would have your 24 pounds spread over 24 square inches, which means you have 1 pound for each square inch. That "one pound for each square inch" is the pressure, and we would call this 1 PSI (Pounds per Square Inch). Now, if I were to make the same cheese, but my mould was 4 x 4 inches, then the area is only 16 square inches. If I put 24 lbs on top of that, I'm spreading the weight over a smaller area, so I would have 24 lbs/16 sqinch or 1.5 pounds per square inch, so 1.5 PSI. For me to put my cheese under the same pressure as you, I would only need to put 16 lbs on top.
Of course many moulds are circular, and this is where our highschool maths come in and we remember that Pi are square not round, meaning the area of a circle is calculated by Pi multiplied by the radius squared. So if my round mould is 8 inches across at the widest point (the diameter), then it has a radius of 4 inches (half the diameter), so square that 4 for 16. Pi, for our purposes is equal to 3.14, so 3.14 times 16 is 50.24, so the areas of my round mould is 50.24 square inches. To get the 1 PSI that replicates the pressure of our original cheese means I now have to put 50.24 lbs on top of my cheese.
If you search around, you'll find an excel book I've posted called "CheeseTools" and one of the pages is set up to calculate PSI for you if you enter the dimetions of your mould and the weight. It can also tell you the amount of weight you would require to obtain a given PSI based upon your mould dimentions.
- Jeff
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 15, 2012, 06:44:44 AM
It's weighing in at 5.5 pounds.
Wow, from 4 gallons of milk. Must be a significant amount of residual moisture/whey still in there. After air-drying a bit did you re-weigh it?
Looks great. The Tomme I did a while back was soaked in a merlot brine and it was only a little bit into the rind when I cut it. I was a little afraid to just soak in the wine without salt added. Anyone else out there with an informed opinion on wine only or wine-brine?
-Boofer-
Quote from: Boofer on February 16, 2012, 03:34:47 PM
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 15, 2012, 06:44:44 AM
It's weighing in at 5.5 pounds.
Wow, from 4 gallons of milk. Must be a significant amount of residual moisture/whey still in there. After air-drying a bit did you re-weigh it?
This should be a fairly moist cheese. The description in Tim Smith's book says 'semi-soft'. It has dropped a couple of ounces and may lose a couple more. The yields from Clover's milk have been consistently high for the last couple of months. The manchego from last week is weighing in at just over 5 pounds. It also started with 4 gallons of milk.
I'm getting the same high yields as we've gone into winter.
Quote from: JeffHamm on February 16, 2012, 06:52:14 AM
Hi smellysell,
Although most recipies you are likely to find in books will list how much weight to press your cheese. Unfortunately, what is really important to keep things similar from one make to the next is how much pressure to put the cheese under. Now, the two are related, but not the same thing. Weight is what we're used to thinking of, pounds or kilograms (actually, pounds measures weight and kilograms is mass, which is why your weight changes when you go to the moon, you shed pounds, but your mass doesn't, you have the same kilograms. This makes sense if you think of the two kinds of scales we have, spring scales and balance scales. Pounds is measured by how far gravity stretches a spring and mass by how many standardized things you need to stack on the other side of the balance scale - hmmm, I'm digressing).
Anyway, for the practicle cheesemaker on earth, pounds and kilos are the same thing. Pressure, however, encorporates information about how that weight is distributed over space. So, if you have rectangle mould of 4 inches wide by 6 inches long by some amount high (the height doesn't matter), then the area of the follower is 4 x 6, or 24 square inches. If you put 24 lbs on top of that follower, you would have your 24 pounds spread over 24 square inches, which means you have 1 pound for each square inch. That "one pound for each square inch" is the pressure, and we would call this 1 PSI (Pounds per Square Inch). Now, if I were to make the same cheese, but my mould was 4 x 4 inches, then the area is only 16 square inches. If I put 24 lbs on top of that, I'm spreading the weight over a smaller area, so I would have 24 lbs/16 sqinch or 1.5 pounds per square inch, so 1.5 PSI. For me to put my cheese under the same pressure as you, I would only need to put 16 lbs on top.
Of course many moulds are circular, and this is where our highschool maths come in and we remember that Pi are square not round, meaning the area of a circle is calculated by Pi multiplied by the radius squared. So if my round mould is 8 inches across at the widest point (the diameter), then it has a radius of 4 inches (half the diameter), so square that 4 for 16. Pi, for our purposes is equal to 3.14, so 3.14 times 16 is 50.24, so the areas of my round mould is 50.24 square inches. To get the 1 PSI that replicates the pressure of our original cheese means I now have to put 50.24 lbs on top of my cheese.
If you search around, you'll find an excel book I've posted called "CheeseTools" and one of the pages is set up to calculate PSI for you if you enter the dimetions of your mould and the weight. It can also tell you the amount of weight you would require to obtain a given PSI based upon your mould dimentions.
- Jeff
Ah, that makes sense. Thank you! For some reason I didn't think far enough to realize that the surface area would affect the amount of weight needed.
One more question, and then I promise I'll stop...
Is there an advantage to adding hot water to increase the temp rather than just adding heat to bump it up?
Quote from: smellysell on February 17, 2012, 04:01:03 AM
One more question, and then I promise I'll stop...
Is there an advantage to adding hot water to increase the temp rather than just adding heat to bump it up?
Ask away! It's how we all learned.
You must be asking about adding hot water to the curd vs applying external heat to the pot during the cooking process. Yes, the two procedures have different effects on the final product. Adding the water (called washing the curd) results in a smoother softer milder paste in the final cheese. Gouda is perhaps the best known of the washed curd cheese types.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 17, 2012, 06:03:29 AM
Quote from: smellysell on February 17, 2012, 04:01:03 AM
Is there an advantage to adding hot water to increase the temp rather than just adding heat to bump it up?
Adding the water (called washing the curd) results in a smoother softer milder paste in the final cheese.
I would just add, to clarify, that you're removing lactose (and lactic acid already formed).
-Boofer-
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 17, 2012, 06:03:29 AM
Quote from: smellysell on February 17, 2012, 04:01:03 AM
One more question, and then I promise I'll stop...
Is there an advantage to adding hot water to increase the temp rather than just adding heat to bump it up?
Ask away! It's how we all learned.
You must be asking about adding hot water to the curd vs applying external heat to the pot during the cooking process. Yes, the two procedures have different effects on the final product. Adding the water (called washing the curd) results in a smoother softer milder paste in the final cheese. Gouda is perhaps the best known of the washed curd cheese types.
Ahh, I see. Always wondered what was meant by washing the curd. Thanks for all the help.
Ok, I lied, one more question. I've been reading up on using floc time with a factor, and want to try it on this instead of using the clean break. Is the number you come up with counted after adding the rennet, or after floc occurs?
After rennet.
Quote from: Sailor Con Queso on February 20, 2012, 11:16:33 PM
After rennet.
That's what I figured, but wanted to make sure. Thanks!
I have this ripening right now. Thanks again for the recipe!
Can you post a picture of yours?
Mine has finished air-drying with a weight just 1 oz shy of 5 pounds and is about to go into wax for aging.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 26, 2012, 10:56:36 PM
Can you post a picture of yours?
Mine has finished air-drying with a weight just 1 oz shy of 5 pounds and is about to go into wax for aging.
Of course. Might be a bit ugly though as it's only my 3rd pressed cheese. I only used 2 gallons of milk too.
This is the first wine marinated cheese I've made, so I'm curious about what others look like.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on February 27, 2012, 03:32:05 AM
This is the first wine marinated cheese I've made, so I'm curious about what others look like.
Mine is in the mead bath right now. Doing some googling to decide if I'm going to follow your day in day out day in routine or try something else.
Decided to just go with a 72 hours soak.
(http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s275/smellysell/photobucket-596-1330660066678.jpg)
Lookin' good! A cheese for you!
It looks very much like mine did. I don't know the motivation behind the day in, day out, day in directions from the recipe I followed. It will be interesting to compare later on.
The vaca al vino aka Drunken Clover was cut open today. It's a bit like a good havarti with a slight fruity note. It's moist with an open texture. My daughter and husband like it. I started another one today with 4.5 gallons of milk (3- gallons of today's milk and 1.5+ one or two days old).
Beautiful cheese. Sounds very tasty too.
-Boofer-
That does look very nice. A cheese to you.
- Jeff
Looking very good! I make two batches of Cabra al Vino myself but I never tried the same recipe with cows milk. Both times however, during air-drying, the rind cracked a bit. According to some people her on the forum, this could be caused by the fact that the wine that I used was quite dry. How does the wine you used taste like?
Quote from: JeffHamm on February 16, 2012, 06:52:14 AM
Although most recipies you are likely to find in books will list how much weight to press your cheese. Unfortunately, what is really important to keep things similar from one make to the next is how much pressure to put the cheese under. Now, the two are related, but not the same thing. Weight is what we're used to thinking of, pounds or kilograms (actually, pounds measures weight and kilograms is mass, which is why your weight changes when you go to the moon, you shed pounds, but your mass doesn't, you have the same kilograms. This makes sense if you think of the two kinds of scales we have, spring scales and balance scales. Pounds is measured by how far gravity stretches a spring and mass by how many standardized things you need to stack on the other side of the balance scale - hmmm, I'm digressing).
Actually, pounds and kilograms are both measures of mass. One kilo equals 2.2 pounds, one pound equals 0.45 kilos - it's only a difference of quantity, not quality. Or to put it another way, both the Imperial & metric units are measuring the same thing in the same way.
Weight (i.e. the force which that mass exerts) is measured in newtons. You're right about the scale types, but as the spring-type scales are calibrated to "Earth normal"conditions, they're still a good guide to the object's mass (under those conditions).
Those are some gorgeous cheeses, by the way.
Quotethe wine that I used was quite dry
Dryness is just the amount of residual sugar in the wine. The cracks are likely more related to low humidity and too rapid drying of the surface.
Id like to pitch my opinion regarind Wine soak.
I would add at least 2% salt by wight to avoid drawing salt from the cheese and also add calcium chloride for the same reason.
Quote from: tinysar on April 22, 2012, 09:51:41 AM
Quote from: JeffHamm on February 16, 2012, 06:52:14 AM
Although most recipies you are likely to find in books will list how much weight to press your cheese. Unfortunately, what is really important to keep things similar from one make to the next is how much pressure to put the cheese under. Now, the two are related, but not the same thing. Weight is what we're used to thinking of, pounds or kilograms (actually, pounds measures weight and kilograms is mass, which is why your weight changes when you go to the moon, you shed pounds, but your mass doesn't, you have the same kilograms. This makes sense if you think of the two kinds of scales we have, spring scales and balance scales. Pounds is measured by how far gravity stretches a spring and mass by how many standardized things you need to stack on the other side of the balance scale - hmmm, I'm digressing).
Actually, pounds and kilograms are both measures of mass. One kilo equals 2.2 pounds, one pound equals 0.45 kilos - it's only a difference of quantity, not quality. Or to put it another way, both the Imperial & metric units are measuring the same thing in the same way.
Weight (i.e. the force which that mass exerts) is measured in newtons. You're right about the scale types, but as the spring-type scales are calibrated to "Earth normal"conditions, they're still a good guide to the object's mass (under those conditions).
Those are some gorgeous cheeses, by the way.
It appears we're both right, well, at least according to Wikipedia, the source of all truth and knowledge! There are two "kinds" of pounds, pound force and pound mass. I had only heard of pounds as a measure of force, and did not know they were officially recognized as a measure of mass as well. Those tricky pounds.
- Jeff
The wine was a dark somewhat fruity California red. Not dry, but not sweet either. The wine soak must not have pulled much salt or calcium from the cheese. Although I didn't add salt to the wine, both my daughter and husband remarked that the cheese was a little salty. I decreased the salt to 2.5 tablespoons for yesterday's make. I've started another today, so the steeping wine will be put to double use. The temperatures ran a bit high on today's make, so this one should be a bit drier than the first.
Oh those pesky pounds.
Was the cheese vacuum or was aged as natural rind? I wont how well the wine rind inhibits molds.
It was natural rind for about a month, then waxed. If my cheese cave wasn't so crowded I would have left it natural, but my cheeses are packed in so tightly it's hard to give natural rinds the needed breathing space. It was too big to vac pack, thus the wax. The wine layer seemed like it did seal the cheese somewhat. It retained more moisture than my natural rind goudas and Iberians, which are also washed curd cheese with a similar make. It would develop a little white dusting which was easy to clean.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on April 22, 2012, 06:03:23 AM
The vaca al vino aka Drunken Clover was cut open today. It's a bit like a good havarti with a slight fruity note. It's moist with an open texture. My daughter and husband like it. I started another one today with 4.5 gallons of milk (3- gallons of today's milk and 1.5+ one or two days old).
Very fine looking cheese CM! I would really like to try a bite of this one! A cheese for you!
Quote from: JeffHamm on April 22, 2012, 05:40:55 PM
It appears we're both right, well, at least according to Wikipedia, the source of all truth and knowledge! There are two "kinds" of pounds, pound force and pound mass. I had only heard of pounds as a measure of force, and did not know they were officially recognized as a measure of mass as well. Those tricky pounds.
Huh, so I guess PSI would be "pounds force"? And you're forgetting the other two kinds of pounds: pounds-currency and pounds-forehead-because-all-recipes-are-in-bizarre-archaic-units. ;)
I wonder if some natural-rind vino's end up changing colour (again, I mean) due to some kind of reaction with surface bacteria/molds? Have you ever spilt red wine on a cloth and then washed it with soap & seen it turn blue? I mean, that reaction's probably a basic-pH thing which wouldn't apply to cheese, but who knows, maybe other things could happen?
Also, in one of the Fourme D'Ambert threads they were talking about injecting a kind of white wine into the spaces inside the cheese - I wonder how this would look (and taste!) if you used a red?
Quote from: tinysar on April 23, 2012, 11:27:26 AM
pounds-forehead-because-all-recipes-are-in-bizarre-archaic-units. ;)
:) I'm guessing "bar" and "kilopascals" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(unit)).
Quote from: tinysar on April 23, 2012, 11:27:26 AM
Also, in one of the Fourme D'Ambert threads they were talking about injecting a kind of white wine into the spaces inside the cheese - I wonder how this would look (and taste!) if you used a red?
That would be
Vouvray wine, which is a fruity, floral, slightly sweet white French wine. It's done with some Fourme d'Ambert cheeses, but not all. I will try it with mine (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,9508.0.html) once I start getting a good blue color developing.
There have been other attempts by members to put red wine color & flavor into their cheeses on the forum. I think the result was less memorable than they expected.
-Boofer-
Quote from: tinysar on April 23, 2012, 11:27:26 AM
I wonder if some natural-rind vino's end up changing colour (again, I mean) due to some kind of reaction with surface bacteria/molds? Have you ever spilt red wine on a cloth and then washed it with soap & seen it turn blue? I mean, that reaction's probably a basic-pH thing which wouldn't apply to cheese, but who knows, maybe other things could happen?
Also, in one of the Fourme D'Ambert threads they were talking about injecting a kind of white wine into the spaces inside the cheese - I wonder how this would look (and taste!) if you used a red?
tie dyed hippy cheese? groovy. ;D
Quote from: tinysar on April 23, 2012, 11:27:26 AM
Quote from: JeffHamm on April 22, 2012, 05:40:55 PM
It appears we're both right, well, at least according to Wikipedia, the source of all truth and knowledge! There are two "kinds" of pounds, pound force and pound mass. I had only heard of pounds as a measure of force, and did not know they were officially recognized as a measure of mass as well. Those tricky pounds.
Huh, so I guess PSI would be "pounds force"? And you're forgetting the other two kinds of pounds: pounds-currency and pounds-forehead-because-all-recipes-are-in-bizarre-archaic-units. ;)
Yes, PSI would be pounds-force because pressure is a force distributed over area. The unit of mass that was normally associated with "pounds-force" was a slug (which was the amount of mass that would accelerate at 1 ft per second squared when 1 pound of force was applied). So, I suppose we could talk about how many slugs we should put on our cheese? Hmmmm, perhaps not.
- Jeff