CheeseForum.org » Forum

Hi everyone, i tried to post this earlier but it didn't work. So I shall try again.

So over the past couple of days my first cheddar has come together, although not that well as you will see in the pictures. It was so much fun  and I will be making this cheese again with some possible alterations if there are any suggestions please allow them to flow freely!

The recipe is loosely based on Ricki Carrol's traditional cheddar as well as a few bits and pieces I have picked up from browsing the forum, here is the method:

1.   18L of Safeway full cream pasteurised and homogenised milk
Heated to 32C and 3 'dashes' of powdered Cheese starter culture A from cheeselinks.com added
Added 4.5ml of 50% strength calcium chloride solution dissolved in ½ cup of pure water
Added 1 'smidgen' of lipase powder dissolved in ¼ cup of pure water
Held at 32C for 1 hour with a stir every 10 minutes.
pH tested (I have calibrated the meter but I'm not sure how accurate it is as it was quite cheap on eBay) pH was: 6.6

2.   3.5ml of vegetarian rennet diluted in ¼ pure water was added and stirred through
After 50 mins' curd was cut into 6mm cubes
Curds were allowed to heal for 5 mins' pH of whey was:  6.5

3.   Temperature was then gradually raised to 39C over a period of 40 minutes with intermittent stirring of curds to prevent matting
The temperature was then held at 39C for 30 mins and stirred every 5 mins to prevent matting
Curds were allowed to rest for 20 mins and then drained in a colander

4.   The curds were tied up into 3 cheesecloth bags and placed into the pot to set for 15 mins
The resulting lumps of curd were cut into 8cm slices and placed into a pot surrounded by 39C water
The slices were turned at 15 minute intervals with the pH of the whey being taken each time after the second turn as follows:
30mins: 5.3
45mins: 5.2
60mins: 5.1

5.   The cheddaring was initially going to be for 2 hours but after 1 hour the pH was getting to low so the curds were diced in to 2cm cubes.
The cubes were weighed (2378g) and salted (70g) then immediately placed into the cloth lined mould and pressed as follows:
5kg for 15 mins (curds didn't even hold together)
10kg for 15 mins (just held together)
Flipped and 20kg for 14 hours
Flipped and 25kg for 22 hours

6.   The cheese was removed from the press for drying.
The final knit is not great and care will need to be taken in the drying and ageing of the cheese, possibly washed down with a brine regularly?

For next time:
To ensure a better knit the curds will be gently heated to 39C after cubing and salting to allow them to come together more easily. Adding more weight in the pressing is not really an option right now.

Question: Given the poor knit what are my options to keep this cheese from spoiling; I think I will try larding and cloth once it has dried a bit but until then should I regularly wipe it down with brine?

Hi lycon, I read you make notes and compared to my notes
https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,13629.0.html
There doesn't seem too much different apart from a couple of notables
1. The pressing weight  - and as you have mentioned is not possible to increase that at the moment. and
2. the pressing times.
5kg for 15 mins (curds didn't even hold together)
10kg for 15 mins (just held together)
Flipped and 20kg for 14 hours
Flipped and 25kg for 22 hours

There are couple of things you might like to try next time. 
First. I try and use  Pasteurised only milk - unhomogenised.  It's more expensive but the curds are much better behaved. Because a Cheddar is internally salted it needs much more pressure to knit, I found 25Kg just doesn't put enough force to curds. To help improve - when you drain the curds -  keep your whey, at 39 DegC, place the curds in the mould and place it back in the warm whey and for the first two pressings increase the press weight to 10kg for 30 minutes, redress and press again 'Under the whey' at 10kg for 30 minutes.  The warmer temperature and increased first two pressing weights will aid in the closing of the curds.  Redress but, don't put back into the whey as it will leach out the salt. Press with as much weight overnight.  You might find the Lipase puts a bit of a funny tang to cheese - its a personal preference but, a nice cheddar will develop a wonderful one without it if left longer than 6 months.  Your final pH looks good.

How long are you planning to age this one ?  Because of the lighter pressing weights used you might not be able to excessively age it as it will contain too much moisture.  I you wax it I would keep a close eye on whey collecting between the cheese and the wax.  It can become sour.  I'm a huge fan of cloth bandaging my Cheddars as it has the ability to still transfer moisture and gases though the layers.  Here is how I do it
https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,13778.0.html 


     

Oh and a Cheese for your excellent first Cheddar.

-- Mal

Thanks for your help and the cheese Mal!

I will only age this one for a short time as I am itching to try it, would you say that 3 months would be the minimum? or should I perhaps cut it into 2 smaller wheels a bit earlier to have a look what is going on just in case some nasties are creeping in?

Your cloth bandaging method looks amazing so I will be doing that for sure. I will be having another crack at this using some homogenised milk in a week or so and will be sure to take your advice in the pressing department, should I add some salt to the whey for the first 2 pressings? Or given the short contact time would this be unnecessary? For the next batch I will omit the lipase since I will hopefully be able to age it longer.

Oh and instead of cubing the curds for salting would breaking it up into slightly smaller pieces help it knit as well?

Lycon, good work on your first cheddar. I'll add a cheese for you as well to help the collection along.

In addition to Mal's excellent advice, I'm curious about the limitation on the pressing weight -- what are you currently using to press the cheese? Maybe we can help you come up with a way to go higher.

I'd say that 3 months will be the minimum. Whether or not you are disappointed with it at that point may depend on the amount of lipase and how much you like the lipase flavor. Like Mal, I would recommend against lipase in a cheddar. When I have used lipase in a short-aged cheese (Caerphilly, 3-4 weeks), I have liked it fairly well. When I have used it in even just a bit longer aged cheese (Lancashire, 6-7 weeks), it has been a bit too strong. When I have used it in a longer aged cheese (Manchego, 3-6 months), it has been radioactive. I did use it in a very long aged romano style cheese -- I think, since that one is for grating, it will be okay, but it is only at 10 months, so I still have a ways to go before cutting it.

When I made my first couple of cheddars, I tried them at 3 months, and was disappointed. Now I add extra cream and take them to a minimum of 6 months, and they are beyond-belief good.

Thanks for the cheese and advice Andy 

It was a very small amount of lipase so hopefully it is not radioactive!

My press is a very simple one that I got on-line just 2 pieces of wood and some wooden poles to guide them. The reason that I cant really add more weight is that I feel I have stacked about as much as I feel comfortable with leaving unattended overnight. I will be moving houses in February and will finally be able to set myself up a little workshop so once that happens I will be making myself a nice lever press for sure. In the meantime I may be able to get some slightly larger weights but not enough for a dramatic increase.

Mal and Dr. Awake shared some of my sentiments with you so I'll not repeat them.  My recommendation is that you purchase known cultures rather than use a prepackaged blended culture of unknown composition.  You can search for "cheddar cultures" or "cheddar" in the Forum's search window and read lots of posts and get an idea of what successful cheddar makers are using.  That way you avoid "chasing" the drop in pH and end up cutting the cheddaring process short.  Ideally, a cheddar is is cubed and salted at a pH of around 5.1 to 5.2.  It will drop a bit more in pressing but still be OK.  This means it should be slabbed (cheddaring) at a pH of around 5.4-5.5.

Making a cheddar cheese involves a bit of juggling:  You need to cheddar the curds at around 95F (35C) and hold it there for good molding qualities and yet this is the temperature close to where you get the fastest acid build up (fastest pH drop).  If you use too much culture then the process of making the cheese has to be shortened before the pH gets too low.  Ideally, the "make" process is completed right when the pH hits the goal.  It is better to drag the "make" process out to hit the goal pH than it is to shorten the "make" process to hit the pH goal.  The way you do this is to adjust the starting amount of the cultures and you have to know precisely what is in the culture to consistently do this.

Thanks Kern

The site that I got the starter from lists the cultures in the 'Type A' starter as lactococcus lactis, subsp. lactis and Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris. I love the idea of exploring the effects of different cultures on the acid production during the make and indeed the final taste of the cheese.

I actually just made a mother culture from the last of this starter to try to stretch out the value so I think I am ready to purchase a new culture and I will do some research on what would be best for my next cheddar make.

Ah, a simple, reliable design for the press, and as you note, it has one major drawback -- no mechanical advantage, so you have to stack up as much weight as you can feel comfortable with. I understand the concern; I have had weights come crashing down from where they were stacked on a cheese -- not a fun experience -- but to be fair, it was a less stable arrangement than your press provides. I quickly moved on to a lever-style press. If you are interested, there are various plans floating around this forum, including a couple that make use of the style of weight that you are currently using. (The press in my avatar is one such.)

I suppose one solution would be to start making the cheese around midnight; that would let the pressing occur during the day, while you could monitor it ... okay, maybe not such a good idea.

hehe yeah I may give the midnight cheese making a miss although I have noticed that that is around the time I finish up by the time I clean up my mess

It would be a great accomplishment to make such a press and I intend to give it a go Feb-March next year, I suppose it will be my new years resolution. Ill be sure to post pictures of what I'm sure will be a few disasters and misadventures, hopefully a working press will come out of it!

Quote from: awakephd on December 08, 2015, 03:40:57 PM
I suppose one solution would be to start making the cheese around midnight; that would let the pressing occur during the day, while you could monitor it ... okay, maybe not such a good idea.

Reminds me of a song from Cats:  "Midnight not a sound from the pavement, only the squeak of cheese press just squeezing alone..."   

Kern, have you been hitting the eggnog already?

Lycon, if you decide not to go with the bandaging, other options are wax or vacuum bagging. I've done several cheddars in the latter, and been very pleased with the results. I have not yet tried the bandaging -- that is on my list to try!

Just an update on this cheese.

it has been 10 days since the make and so far so good, the rind has been slowly forming in the cheese cave and as expected there are little colonies growing in some of the crevasses that were created from the poor knitting, I have just been washing them lightly with salt and vinegar brine but that doesn't seem to help so ill save the effort and just brush it off lightly from now on. I was initially going to wait 3 weeks before sealing (I think I will bandage) and I think that I am still happy to wait another 11 days unless anyone thinks I should be doing it sooner.

However, given that this is a reasonably large cheese (aprox 2kg) that I will crack open quite young (3-4 months) is it entirely necessary to seal it or can I simply let nature take its course and regularly maintain the rind with brushing and vinegar?

So today I Bandaged this cheese

A big thanks to OzzieCheese for the great instructions that he posted the link to above! such a help.
I must say that it was allot of fun and yes it costs a little more than wax that can be reused over and over but it looks amazing and hopefully will result in a better ageing process. I think that I used a little to much lard :p but I was paranoid of not using enough. I guess there is not much to do now but wait as long as I can and then eat it!

Here are some photos.

oops didn't add the photos 

here they are