Friday, September 24, 2010

Cheese Failure #2 and #3

I finally had a chance to check out the cheeses I made a few months ago. They never looked like they were aging well, so my hopes weren't too high. As I figured, they didn't taste very well. The blue might have been salvagable, but the brie certainly wasn't. Amazingly, the textures were spot-on, though. I guess I should be happy about that.

I didn't take any photos, because they were just too scary. I just dumped them as quickly as I could after cutting into them and taking a small taste of each... then washing my mouth with a bit of tequila to kill any scary stuff! I guess it worked, I'm not sick today. Whew.

I think the mistakes could be attributed to two things: 1. I didn't drain the cheeses long enough after they set, and 2. they got too hot about a week into the ripening stage.

This probably caused: 1. the blue to still be losing moisture after three months, and the molds to not grow properly, and 2. killing off the molds before they really had a chance, and to ripen too quickly too early.

If I am going to be successful with this cheese thing, I really do need better facilities, and better temperature control. Our house is just not set up well for making cheese (or beer, for that matter), and we don't have room for another fridge dedicated to cheese. Funny, our last house had both. Go figure.

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