Hello all,
I am understanding from searching the forum that it is best to age a gouda at least 3 weeks before waxing - not one week as the good old "200 Easy Homemade Cheese" book says. I am game for that, but I am concerned about black mold. After 6 days, a tiny amount of black appeared on the middles of both sides. It was easy to wipe it off. Other than that, the rind is drying nicely.
Should I keep wiping it off with a dry paper towel for the next 2 weeks? And on waxing day? I don't want it growing under the wax for several months, of course.
Thanks in advance,
Susannah
Susannah, you need to clean your Gouda with saturated vinegar. Mean so much salt in vinegar as it absorbs.
When you use dry paper, you just spread of mold on the environment.
And you can clean you cave too,
You want to get good clean rind before waxing.
Only you can know when is time to wax your Gouda :)
Hande
Thank you, Hande. Yes, when I wipe the black mold off with a paper towel I wipe a spot and then use a clean part of the towel for the next spot - not ideal but I understand what you mean about spreading the mold spores.
I will use salt saturated in vinegar. But will that lead to a wet surface?
Susannah
Yes, surface will be wet, but will rapidly air dry off, never tried waxing, some here do, and some here have tried and changed to vacuum bagging. Me I like oiling rinds . . . have fun!
I wax Goudas after air-drying until they are ready to wax. How long is that? Well, until the surface feels uniformly dry and firm. Generally it takes more than 2 weeks. I dry on a baking rack with a bamboo mat or a food grade mesh over it. If you are using bamboo, flip the mat when you flip the cheese as the mat absorbs moisture and can act as a haven for mold spores. If there is enough salt in the cheese I typically don't have mold issues other than those associated with the bamboo mat. I flip twice daily at first, and then more sporadically. If you are flipping the Gouda regularly and have decent air circulation around it, you might look back at your brining regime to check if you are getting enough salt in the cheese. The rule of thumb is 12 hours per kg of cheese in saturated brine. The cheese typically floats, so sprinkle the exposed surface liberally with salt and then dunk into brine to moisten. Turn the cheese at least once during the brining.
Goudas are so very attractive waxed.
Thanks so much for answering. I will have to do a search on oiling rinds as I know nothing about it. And for the next Gouda later this month, I will consider increasing the salt concentration in my brine.
Susannah
A gouda will dry fast inside and out so be careful.
Oiling is simple. Grab a nice clean piece of cheese cloth and lightly rub it on the rind in tiny circles. Kind of makes me think of polishing a bowling ball or waxing a car. Light little circles dipping in the oil from time to time. You don't want it wet just polished like your favorite piece of furniture. It will take a few times before it build up a rind don't worry. If you do it right it will shine and make a thin protective coating around your cheese and slow down any molds that want to grab hold.
Quote from: Cloversmilker on March 11, 2012, 06:57:59 PM
The rule of thumb is 12 hours per kg of cheese in saturated brine.
I believe common wisdom is 3-4 hours per pound. Your quote pretty much doubles that.
Here's a
thread (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,7178.0.html) that discusses it.
-Boofer-
Hi,
The "rule of thumb" that someone posted here a while ago was 1 hour per pound per inch (of height; height being the smallest of the 3 dimentions of your cheese); in a satuated brine, which is about 26%.
- Jeff
I'm living in a small town near the city of Gouda, yes, the town that gives it's name to the world famous cheese. I get my raw milk from an artisan cheese farm nearby (or from a goat farm) and nowadays almost every Gouda cheese, artisan, home made or factory made, is coated with a kind of plastic coating. I made 2 kg of Gouda with cummin last weekend (2 wheels) and they have been in an 18 Beaume brine for 24 hours. After that they have been air-drying. When I flipped them this morning (I do that twice a day), they bottom was almost dry. That means that I'm going to coat them tonight. Upper part first because that will be dry then and after a couple of hours I flip them, tomorrow morning I will coat the other half. I coat them 3 times. The cheeses will be able to "breath" and loose some moisture, but there's no chance anymore that the rind will pickup mold. The coated surface can, but is very easy to clean with a cloth and some water and vinegar. When you consume a cheese, the coating can be peeled of very easily when the cheese is on room temperature. The coating is about 6 euro per kilo here and is at least available in yellow and transparent (I'm still searching for black...)
Quote from: Boofer on March 14, 2012, 06:17:51 AM
Quote from: Cloversmilker on March 11, 2012, 06:57:59 PM
The rule of thumb is 12 hours per kg of cheese in saturated brine.
I believe common wisdom is 3-4 hours per pound. Your quote pretty much doubles that.
-Boofer-
The time quoted is that given by Margaret Morris in her Gouda recipe. Glancing through her recipes, I see that this is the same brine time she gives for Edam, Colby, Brick, Monterey Jack, and Parmesan. The time she gives for Caerphilly is 8 hours per kg. This is what works for me with 5 to 6 pound cheeses which are about 8 inches in diameter. I use a super saturated brine which may be a bit on the cool side. I notice that my cheeses develop a thick rind in the brine. After aging, the thickening is not evident. They are not overly salty when aged out.
Here's my last Gouda. It came out of the brine a little over 36 hours ago. It now weighs a little over 5.5 pounds.
Guidelines. That's what they are. If you color outside the lines and it works for you, that becomes your guideline. Cheese and cheesemaking is very subjective. My tastes are certainly very different than my wife's when it comes to eating cheese. The same could probably be said for how a cheese is made. What I do may not appeal or seem "correct" to someone else.
Larger cheeses require longer brine times. I believe some of the larger alpines require 24-48 hours.
Sweet-looking cheese, Cloversmilker.
Quote from: hoeklijn on March 14, 2012, 09:53:20 AM
The coated surface can, but is very easy to clean with a cloth and some water and vinegar. When you consume a cheese, the coating can be peeled of very easily when the cheese is on room temperature.
I tried a
Delft Blue (Made in Holland) with transparent coating under the wax yesterday. The cheese, when I finally reached it, was quite nice. The coating was a bit of a struggle to remove. I had to use a knife to gently tease it away from the cheese. Seems like this discussion should be in another forum section.
-Boofer-
It would make a nice dicussion.
Hoeklijn,
The coating sounds like an excellent alternative to wax. I have not heard of it previously. I wonder if it will be available in the US/Canada sometime soon.
Boofer,
I've found the guidelines Margaret Morris gives to be quite reliable in my cheese making endeavors. I have the sense that all her recipes have been thoroughly tested; that certainly isn't the case for recipes given by other authors. Her recipes are usually for the size of make that I use; I suspect that has something to do with why the brining time works for me. There are a couple of additional factors; my brine is relatively cool throughout the process and my brine pot is not as large as perhaps it should be compared to the size of my cheese. I guess this is a matter of what works for me with my equipment.
Margaret Morris uses a coating before she waxes and loves it. I bought some from her the last time we talked but never tried it.Seems someone else here tried it and didn't like it. Wonder if it is similar?
Cloversmilker, take a look at http://www.brouwland.com/en/ (http://www.brouwland.com/en/) and look for Diarying, other additives. I'm not sure they ship overseas, but it's the only webshop I know that is also in English and does sell this coating (however only in yellow and they are more expensive than my supplier...)
@ Boofer and DeejayDebi: I'm not very active (yet) on this forum, where should I start a new topic on this, because I'm of course willing to share my knowledge and experiences on this...
STANDARD METHODS - Aging Cheese?
Air drying, humidity and temperature, natural rinds, oiling, waxing, vacuum bags, bandaging . . .
https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,184.0.html (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,184.0.html)
Looks like a good place to me?
Dairy Connection carries a product called Paracoating, I believe