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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".

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 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.