Waxin' De Cheese Mon

After a week of aging/rind-building the cheese has mellowed and lost most of its sour aroma, but has kept all of its delicious cheese smell. It's built a nice yellow rind and was dry to the touch on day three. I gave it a few extra days of rind building as I've read this can help it dry out a bit, get the extra whey out, and help with the sourness. Although dry, the cheese was slightly oily to the touch. It didn't have drops of oil on it or anything, so I think this should be fine.

Time to wax!

I used a casserole tin to heat up my wax in. Expect that whatever you use will be ruined forever, and should be considered your waxing container henceforth. I plan on storing the wax right in this container when I'm done.

Make sure to use some sort of double boiler system, as wax is highly combustible and shouldn't be allowed near an open flame.

I heated on high until the wax was almost completely melted, at which point I turned off the burner. Make sure to keep an eye on things to prevent the tin from tipping over and letting water in or wax out.

I then washed my hands thoroughly and started by rolling the edge of the cheese in the wax. This was the easiest part and went very smoothly. Next I dipped the ends in. This was wrought with issues. Primarily the large uneven surface was prone to create air pockets that were either encased in the wax or created areas that didn't get covered at all. I used a wide toothpick to pop the bubbles and fill out any uncoated areas. I repeated for three coats. Two would probably be sufficient, but three isn't going to hurt anything.

Lastly I added labels noting when the cheese was created and when it was waxed.

This all took about 45 minutes, but 30 of that was waiting for the wax to melt. Next time I think I'll dip the edges, but use a natural paintbrush to paint the wax on the ends (don't use synthetic as it will melt and destroy your wax and possibly your cheese too). All in all, very easy.

I'm planning on aging one of the wheels for three months and the other for six months. My basement is currently 61F which is pushing the upper limit for aging temp. If it goes any higher I'll move to the fridge.

Happy Waxing!

Every Day I'm Chedderin'

I came.
I saw.
I made Cheddar.
...
Kind of...

I made something called Farmhouse Cheddar. It kinda skips the "Cheddaring" process and cuts about an hour out of the cooking time, but creates a cheese that tastes just like Cheddar, and is, in essence, Cheddar. I put together my recipe/plan based on what made sense to me after reading dozens of online recipes. I'm pretty sure I made some mistakes, and I'll point them out below. I won't know how bad I screwed up until we eat the cheese. Regardless of how the cheese turns out, this has been a pretty rewarding experience.

Here's the goods:

• Total time - 6 hours, including cleanup, but not including taking the cheese out of the mold 12 hours later
• Might be able to skip the pasteurization step and cut off ~2 hours
• Tools
• Cheese Press
• Home Made, see previous posts
• Cheese Mold & Follower
• Weight For the Press
• I used water-filled 0.5 gallon milk bottles, 6-7lbs each
• Double Boiler
• I just put a 2 gallon pot inside my wife's large canning boiler
• You could probably get away without a double boiler, but you'll probably end up with some scorched milk on the bottom. I highly recommend it
• Cooking Thermometer
• Strainer
• Cheese Cloth
• Ladle
• Strained Ladle
• A ladle with holes/slots in it
• Large Metal Wisk
• Wax Paper
• Tin Pan
• Measuring Cup
• Measuring Spoons
• Ingredients
• 1.5G Milk
• I found a local dairy farm that sold Cream Top milk. This is milk that is un-homogenized and pasteurized at a slightly lower temperature (160F I believe). I was assured it was the closest thing to raw milk I could get in the area legally:
  http://rocwiki.org/Pittsford_Dairy
• The recipes I was following called for 2G but I didn't have a pot that could fit that much
• The fact that it was so close to raw milk slightly concerned me, so I ended up re-pasteurizing for 30 minutes at 150F. I don't really think this was necessary, and the heating/pasteurizing/cooling process took just about two hours, so I think I'll try skipping this step next time
• 1 Packet Mesophilic Direct Starter Culture
• I bought a 5 pack from a local store in Philly, but they bought it from here:
  http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/135-Mesophilic-DS-5pack.html
• 1.5T Cheese Salt
• Not the same as table salt:
  http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/66-Cheese-Salt.html
• 0.25t Double Strength Vegetable Rennet Liquid
• I wanted to use animal, but the store only had vedgie:
  http://www.cheesemaking.com/LiquidVegetableRennet.html

Here's the play-by-play of how the whole process went down, including the time relative from start, notes/thoughts, and some pictures. Enjoy!

1. 0:00 Add water to the double boiler's outer pot, add milk to the inner pot, put the inner pot into the outer pot
2. 0:10 50F Start heating 10/10
1. I had let the milk sit out for about an hour, explaining why it was already at 50F
   
3. 0:40 145F Turn off heat
4. 0:45 155F Take off burner
1. I turned off the heat too late. There's some latency using the double boiler you just need to get used to
2. The milk was pasteurized at 160F+ so as long as you keep it below that mark you should be fine
5. 0:50 154F Temp peaked and is falling
6. 0:57 150F Back on burner, turn on heat 4/10
7. 1:05 151F Turn off heat but leave on burner
8. 1:12 150F Time to cool, turn off heat, remove from boiler
1. While the milk is cooling and the boiler is free I added a couple cups of water to account for evaporation, then brought the water to a boil and sterilized my mold, follower, and cheesecloth. A good washing would probably suffice, but I'm neurotic about germs
2. Scoop out 4oz of boiling water to be used to dilute the rennet
   
9. 1:25 136F Holy crap, this is taking forever to cool, put out on 40F porch to facilitate cooling
10. 2:00 120F Man, still taking forever. Adding plastic coated ice-cubes as to not dilute
1. Added ~8 cubes
11. 2:09 109F Adding ~8 more plastic coated ice-cubes
12. 2:20 100F Adding ~8 more, and stirring constantly
13. 2:30 90F Finally cool enough. Remove ice-cubes and add starter culture
1. My first screwup, I added too much starter culture. The packets are supposed to be good for 4G, but given that I had to drive several hundred miles over the course of three days after I bought the culture I assumed that keeping them in my cooler hadn't kept them properly frozen. Aaaand, maybe that meant they wouldn't be as effective? And I didn't know if I could use a half packet and then save the other half after opening. So many questions, so I dumped the whole thing in. More on this later
2. Don't stir in the culture yet. Give it a few minutes to "rehydrate"
14. 2:33 89F Stir in culture, making sure to not just go around but up and down too
1. While waiting add the rennet to the previously gathered water (that has cooled by now) and stir it up
15. 3:00 87F
16. 3:15 85F Add diluted rennet mixture, making sure to stir up and down as rennet is lighter than the milk and will have a tendency to want to stay near the surface. Stir for 5 minutes
17. 3:20 83F Return to double boiler but leave heat off, waiting for the curd to separate from the whey
1. Temp jumped real quick to 89, I probably should have added some cold water to the boiler before putting the milk back in
2. I covered with cheesecloth to prevent flies and whatnot from wandering in, but not sure how necessary this is
   
18. 3:40 86F Setting, but not ready yet
1. I tested using the "clean break" test. You put a knife in the curd/milk at a 45 degree angle and pull up. If this creates a "clean break" then you're set. If it's more like a soft yogurt and kind of pools around it's not ready yet. Another indicator that it's ready is if the space left by the knife leaves a yellowish/greenish pool of whey in its wake.
19. 3:55 85F Clean split, ready for cutting. To cut I simply used my wisk and mixed it up.

1. Mistake number two. I think this might have broken up the curd too much removing too much whey. Maybe? I'm thinking this might lead to a dry/crumbly cheese. Which I'm fine with, but some people may not be
   
20. 3:57 Turn burner on 4/10, heating to 102F slowly over 20-30 minutes, stirring regularly
21. 4:21 100F Turn burner off
22. 4:25 102F Maintain for 50 minutes, stir every 5 minutes to break up the curd
23. 4:40 101F Turn burner on 1/10

1. At this point I started to ladle off the whey, but make sure not to remove any curd
2. If I'd had more time I would have used this curd to make Ricotta and/or bread. Instead it just went down the drain
   
24. 5:25 Strain in cheesecloth lined colander. Break up into small chunks manually. Add salt 0.5T at a time, mixing into cheese with hands after each application
    
25. 5:32 Put curd into cheesecloth lined mold
    
26. 5:35 Press with 6-7lbs for 15 minutes

1. 0.5G of water in a glass bottle works perfectly on my press
2. You'll note a lot of whey comes out and the volume of the cheese greatly decreases
27. 5:50 Flip the cheese, removing any excess whey from the press, and apply ~20lbs of pressure

1. 3x0.5G of water in glass bottles again works great here
2. Set in a pet/kid/etc free place to be pressed for 12 hours
28. 17:00 Remove from press. Delicately remove the cheesecloth as you would remove a sticker from glass (pull back, not up)



1. I ended up cutting my cheese in half to promote drying and because I wanted to have two batches to be aged different lengths (3 and 6 mo). This is definitely not necessary, and for all I know screws everything up
29. Place on a wax-paper lined tray and let dry until a rind appears (yellowish) and the cheese is dry to the touch. You should be flipping the cheese daily during this process, and it might take up to a week, although my guess is less since I cut the cheese (tee hee hee) in half

Tada! The magic of cheese. After sitting for a few hours I've noticed that my cheese has a slightly sour smell to it. Hopefully this will abate with aging, but I'm pretty sure it's because I put too much culture in. I also noticed some small air pockets in the cheese (very small) when I cut it in half. This worried me until I looked at cross sections of other people's farmhouse cheddar and noticed the same thing. Hopefully not a problem, and could probably be averted by using more weight on the press (I've seen some people press Cheddar at 50lbs).

I'm letting it age in my basement where we keep our canned goods. It's about 60F and has a pretty low humidity, so hopefully the rind will build quickly and I can wax the cheese. Proper aging temperature is 45-60F, optimally around 50F. The higher the temperature the more quickly the cheese will age.

Expect another post once we've reached the waxing milestone.

Cheese Press Mods

After playing around with my DIY cheese press a bit I noticed a big problem: friction. The threads on the hex bolts were binding with the follower board so much that in a real application when the cheese compresses the board wouldn't actually "follow" it down. Dealbreaker.

Solution: Go Threadless! What has no threads, you ask? Why 1/2" dowel has no threads. I headed over to the Home Depot with an idea in my head and picked up a 1/2x48" dowel and a tube of food grade silicone sealant. I used food grade silicone since we're dealing with food, but I'm not sure how important that is since where the silicone goes the food does not, but better safe than sorry. I used the silicone to give the dowels a tighter fit and prevent any bacteria/etc from getting down in the gap where it's hard to clean.

I cut the dowel into 12" lengths (also giving me 4" more head than the hex bolts, bonus!) and sanded the ends smooth. Then I dry fit everything and thanked the carpentry Gods everything shored up.

Next I drilled 7/64" pilot holes, one for each dowel coming in from the long side of the board. I figured this way was least likely to split the board. I drilled the pilot holes without the dowel in place because I want the dowel to split a little to increase the friction holding it in place.

I then added silicone around the end of the dowel and put it in place. I found putting the silicone on the dowel instead of in the hole was much easier and much more effective. Then I put the dowel in place, twisting it as I put it in. Once in place I screwed in my 1 1/4" outdoor sealed screws. As expected the dowels split, but a little more than I'd hoped. The split went up about 3/8" above the flush line, but I just filled it with a little silicone and it was good to go. I had enlarged the holes slightly to decrease friction with the threads (maybe 1/64") and I think that extra gap is what allowed for the excess splitting. If you stick with a solid 1/2" hole I think you should fare better. Lastly I cleaned up the excess silicone on both sides, added the follower, and let the silicone cure. I might add another layer of silicone if it pulls in too much, but I think I should be in good shape.