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Quote from: mathewjones on June 02, 2018, 07:22:40 AM

Quote from: feather on May 31, 2018, 04:10:42 PM
Mathew, sorry I misspelled your name previously. I did talk with Ethan, and he is super duper helpful about cheese cultures. I so appreciate the recommendation from you about the website/store. Thank you!

Feather,

Cool that you talked with Ethan at getculture. I've only been there twice, but he's really enthusiastic and helpful. I told him about my disastrous washed rind issue with the Gruyere and he emailed me later with a bunch of instructions that he looked up online. Customer service. Check!

Your cheeses look groovy. I would give you a "cheese", but I can't figure out how to do that. Perhaps one needs to have a certain number of "cheeses" themself before the forum allows one to bestow a "cheese" on another? Anyway, yours look delicious.

Regarding how slow it is here on this forum, I don't know. I posted my first post and got responses nearly the next day. But I posted about "quick" cheeses and included pix (i.e., after I cracked them), not about my cheeses in progress (e.g. my cheddar. etc) If I had started off with my cheddar (still aging), I assume that nobody would care to respond until I showed them the finished product.

Having said that, here's a pic of a cheddar/blue in progress (from Gavin Webber's recipe) that was *literally* entirely orange colored (I added annatto as coloring during the make) this morning when I left for work, but is now covered with *blue* when I came home from work this evening. Ten hours to turn from total orange to covered in blue! Things happen fast. Cheese biology is apparently something quite subtle and volatile, I'm learning.

It's blue! What shall I do?

{I actually know what I shall do - I'll probably pierce it all over tomorrow, then put it in the cave and let it fester for another several weeks, turning weekly}

Anyone with any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Cheers,

Matt

To be clear:
- This is supposed to be a blue/cheddar (maybe like a Shropshire Blue or something like that)
- This cheese is supposed to turn blue (has P. Roqueforti), eventually, so the blue is a good thing.
- This has been pressed quite hard overnight (e.g., 20 Lbs - my press is not well-calibrated, and not well-balanced, obviously judging by the lopsided shape, but that is incidental, n'est ce pas?) , and then was removed from the press and has been drying at room temp (actually inside a plastic box, not on a shelf) for about 4 days. I made it on Mon May 28, I took it out of the mold and set it out to dry on Tues May 29. This morning at 10 am (Jun 1) it was completely orange (because of annatto coloring in the make) and tonight at 9 pm it was completely covered in blue mould.

I'm stunned at how quickly this blue-ing happened. I need to watch my cheese more carefully, I guess!

But this IS what I wanted to happen. It's a semi-hard cheddar blue, exactly as desired.

But now I need to nurse it and age it to get the right flavor.

So, friends, PLEASE give me suggestions to help me to NOT F*ck it up!!

I'm thinking just put it in the cave (wine fridge), in a plastic box, with some moist paper towels and plastic spacers, like I've done with my other ones. This method has worked OK for the others (except for the Gruyere washed-rind, which I thought was a disaster but some other folks thought looked yummy). Anyway, is this plan ok?

Thanks,

Matt

Cheers,

Matt

Thanks for the cheese Mathew.
Sometimes they go lopsided in the press, no worries, it will still be good cheese.

I'd pierce it top/bottom/sides to let air in, as blue needs air. Put it in the cheese fridge. Turn it over every few days to few weeks. If the blue gets too thick on the outside you can wipe it down with brine/vinegar/cacl2 solution. In a ripening box, not too wet, not dry. Sounds like a very good plan.

This is normal for large areas to turn blue quite quickly , after all you did inoculate it with blue....

Just keep following the recipe for how to age it , and keep posting pics with observations.

Hi everyone! My name is Steve and my lovely wife and I live on Gabriola Island off the coast of Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia Canada.

We've just started making cheese recently - the easy ones such as Mozzarella, buratta and chèvre, all of which turned out very well indeed!

We decided to get into the hard cheeses and took s quick course on making Havarti. It's turning out well so far - just drying prior to us waxing then aging the cheese. We are very fortunate in having access to milk from a Swiss cow.

Here is a photo of the havarti drying