Since some of you showed interest in cheese making, I’m attaching few additional pics. As I make more, I will try to keep this updated. I pretty new to it, but I am willing to share what I’ve learned. After a couple more batches, I will consider doing a class.
If you have any questions, just reply or send me a message. If I do not know the answer, I will do my best to find one for you.
Below is a pic showing a few of the stages I went through to make this cheddar. Unfortunately, the pics start after the cheddar’ing process, when I broke up the curds. The mold that I used is a small hard cheese mold which is good for rounds up to 2 lbs. One of the pics shows a tomato can that used in combination with the weights to press down on the follower. This ultimately failed part of the way through the night, crashing to the floor.
The reason for the crashing weights in the middle of the night, was do to the uneven settling of the curds. The weight and balance shifted, and scared the crap out of everyone in the house.
The next day, I built the following press from a large HDPE cutting board that I had and 3/4 in PVC. This helped to balance everything.
After air drying for about a week, flipping the cheese every day, it was ready to be sealed and placed in my “cheese cave” for aging. I didn’t have cheese wax, but I did have a vacuum sealer.
This is a pic of my “cheese cave”. I found a scratched 38 bottle, dual zone, Frigidaire wine cooler. I will post more on this later.
3 months, 7 days of aging later, we got to taste it (original pic). Some of the larger pieces, I decided to wax for additional aging and possible cold smoking.