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Man oh man. Cheese. For Christmas my girlfriend and I received a joint present of a cheesemaking kit and a large pot and curd spoon/ladle. We're going to start off easy trying out the simple mozzarella and maybe make ricotta out of the whey. (Honestly, if you have whey, why wouldn't you make ricotta with it?) I honestly want to jump in and try to make a gouda and age it, but I should really just try the simple poo poo first and see how I gently caress it up.
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Dec 31, 2014 21:43
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:33 |
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Some rennet, citric acid, cheese salt, cheescloth, dairy thermometer, instructions. We also got Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. I'm just really excited. I've been going through the book like mad, looking through this thread and /r/cheesemaking
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Jan 1, 2015 23:01
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Cheese report! As was said, we did not recover any ricotta from the whey. We did make mozzarella though! It came out a bit tough. I suspect this is from overworking the curds when trying to form it into the ball shape. OR from letting the rennet set it for too long. We used a quarter tablet that wasn't quite dissolved fully, and we waited 15 minutes for the curd to have a somewhat clean break. Maybe the rennet wasn't distributed well? We cut the ball in half maybe an hour after it was shaped and cooled, and it looked marbled on the inside? Don't know what did that.  Anyway, it came out normal-tasting. Just tough. I'm just happy it came out as a cheese.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:09
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I'm doing my first attempt at a hard cheese, a gouda. I just put it in the brine. Things seem to be going okay. I was worried because my form was not even close to being able to handle all the curds I had. Eventually they all fit. This is what it ended up looking like. I'm about to pick up a wine fridge off of Craigslist. While the cheese is brining I plan to give the fridge a thorough clean, let it cool, and adjust the temp. Then I shall chuck the cheese in there and go see the Misfits (or at least Doyle.) And see how that goes. That wine fridge is going to be seeing a lot of cheese and charcuterie.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:55
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Waterslide Industry Lobbyist posted:What do you use for your "cave?" I've been making a lot of mozzarella recently and want to start getting into aged cheeses but live in the mountains. It is cold and dry here now, and in a few months it will be hot and dry. Would a cheapo mini-fridge with a good hygrometer and thermometer work out alright? It's working for me (Humidity is high in that picture, I know.) I got a wine fridge off of craigslist very cheap, gave it a big, thorough scrub, and adjusted the temp controls until it was about 52F. I have a bit of water in a jar with paper towel sticking out to wick it into the air. It works too well, as you see the humidity is almost 90% in that picture. I've since adjusted it and it's sitting at about 78% Don't make fun of my job of trussing up the bresaola.   In other news, let's see how long I can wait before I crack this badboy open. 
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Mar 11, 2015 18:48
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