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CaffeineFlo, how are your cheeses coming along?
I couldn't resist trying one at two months old.  I'm not sure that I've ever had real Raclette but I think it turned out really well. Nice fudgy/sticky texture, buttery and fruity, with a slight bit of funk. It melts wonderfully.

Solutions are generally w/v, weight for volume, so a 3% brine is 3 grams of salt in 100 ml of water.  There is no need to subtract the weight of the solute (in this case salt), since the Na and Cl ions find their own space between the water molecules.  Unlikely to make any difference, though!

@Bantams
That looks sooooooo beautiful!! Congratulations!

I haven't tried mine yet, but my birthday is coming up in ~2 Weeks ans a proper Raclette would make for a nice birthday dinner... maybe my impatience is overcoming me.

My #2 (Springform) is doing nicely. I barely touch it anymore and it's super super orange.
My #1 (Flexible cake form) has a nice orange hue on the rim but not so much on top on bottom. It's weird but probably ph and draining related.
My #3 that had B Linens in the curds is also looking nicely despite having avoided the ripening box so far and I vacuum bagged that one yesterday and put the #1 cheese in it's place to hopefully help there a little.

Again, I'm blown away by your picture. I'm sure the nice cheese aging room helped. Maybe I need to buil one myself after all.

Happy Thanksgiving

Small update, I'll be cracking open my Springform Raclette (#2) today in celebration of my 30th birthday. (Pics from two weeks ago attached). I have since dried it up pretty heavily after my fridge didn't work as I wanted and so it got a couple of cracks and the linen died down.

The vacuum sealed little Raclette is back in my wine fridge after the color faded pretty heavily after the vacuum went up.

My biggest and first Raclette still looks unchanged. Super weird how this one went.

Happy birthday! (a bit late I know) ...

would you mind telling us how your cheese tasted? A few pictures would be also very kind!

Thank you,
JD

Hi @jodud,

so sorry for the late reply. I had images but didn't like them too much and wanted to wait to get some more pics before posting my results.

I tried my Raclette #1 and #2 on Dec 11th and Dec 26th (yesterday) and had quite different results between these two weeks already...

Taste profile:
Raclette 1 (Cheesemaking.com recipe) is rather bland - which I attest to the B Linens that never fully got hold for whatever reason
Raclette 2 (Alp D recipe from here) is more complex, especially if you eat the rind.

Melting Profile:
Raclette 1 has a rather strange melting behavior. If you cut a slice and melt it under heat, the cut side becomes dry and doesn't really melt. The internals melt.
Raclette 2 makes things interesting.

During the first tasting, both cheese had similar melting behavior with only little melting happening and the cut side wouldn't melt as nicely. But on the second tasting, Raclette 2 had an excellent melting behavior, Raclette 1 improved as well and both didn't develop lots of fatty eyes as the commercial ones usually do.

I've attached lots of pictures, sorry for the otherwise dirty plate. I just love Raclette