Brie r3 at 6 weeks

We tried another one of the little brie type cheeses at 6 weeks.  I thought it was tasty, even if it was still a hard cheese.  After reading some things, I think it may have too high a fat content to let the proteins get soft... along with the lack of humidity for the white mold.  I still have 2 left in the cave - one I'll let go for a long time to see if it's a good aged hard cheese, the other I've washed in chardonnay (which may cut the saltiness and add some complexity).

Brie - revision #3

Now that I have a dedicated cheese cave that Santa so generously gave me this past Christmas, I took another chance with brie (or cambembert, or more generally a white mold rennetted cheese).  I made this on 3/16/11 with 1 gallon TJ's organic whole milk, 1 pint of TJ's organic heavy cream, flora danica (thanks to my aunt for christmas as well), CaCl, and rennet.  My molding process definitely could use some improved hardware, but I managed to create 3 small disks and two spheres.  They dried in their moulds, were salted, and sat for a bit more on the kitchen counter at room temp in a plastic box for about 4 days.  Now they reside in their cozy cheese cave (aka tiny wine cooler).

Here they are at 1 week old (temp at about 48* F and humidity too low at around 82%).

Since the humidity should be more like 90%, I put a star-san soaked paper towel on the bottom.  After a couple days, I didn't see the humidity rise, so I added more star-san to it, and added another wadded-up star-san soaked paper towel to the shelf with the spheres.  Hopefully that does the trick.  The white mold seems to be starting to grow, so maybe it's just fine... I just want to make sure the white mold gets happy and makes some creamy gooey brie!

We'll see how they turn out in 4 or 5 more weeks.  I figure the small sphere might be worth checking soon - have it on my calendar for April 6.  The others should probably go to April 20 or 27 - again, I put it in my calendar so I don't forget.

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.

cheese update - end of march

Just a quick cheese update at the end of March, sorry no photos... believe me, you didn't want to see it!  Unfortunately, I had to toss the brie.  There was a little fruit fly infestation.  It's a good thing they only like brie, because that's the only cheese box they got into.  I think they were initially drawn in by the beer, but then found the moist brie.  Darn!!!  As I was tossing them, I decided to cut into one just to see what the consistency was like - it looked just like a brie should.  I think they would have been great.  They might have still been okay, but I just didn't like the thought of the fact that there were some flies in there.  Oh well, next time!  At least I know the schedule for the brie works for me and that I need to create a better/safer aging environment.

Meanwhile, the manchego and blue seem to be doing okay.  No fruit flies in their boxes.  The manchego is still keeping the mold at bay... and at this point, I'm sure the skin has developed enough where I wouldn't be too concerned about some mold anyway.

cheese update again

I finally made some time last night to tend to my cheeses (probably a week overdue):


The manchego is definitely faring better in the fridge - molds are at bay, although from the slight cracking, maybe it's not humid enough.  I added a little salt to make sure no more molds show up, and oiled it again.

I wasn't sure how the scraping was really supposed to be performed for the bleu - was I supposed to kind of smear the mold, or scrape it all off?  I ended up just scraping it off because the top layer of cheese was a little slimey (like you would see on the outside of a store-bought wrapped bleu that's been wrapped for awhile).  It's actually really starting to look like a real bleu!  It compared well to the Point Reyes Bleu we had with dinner last night (which was the original host mold).  This could be really good in a few months.  I re-pierced to make sure there was going to be enough internal mold.

The brie are getting a few other strange colors on them - some red/pink color and a yellow spot.  It doesn't really look like mold, but I don't know what else it could be.  The white mold is obviously dying off, so that probably leaves them a little vulnerable.  I decided to unwrap them and see if the white mold will grow back.  Meanwhile, the one I cut and shoved the two halves back together seems to be knitting back together just fine!








And here is the entire cheese collection at this point:

After playing with the cheeses, we opened some of Megan's wine to have with dinner.  She still didn't want a full glass, but agreed that it was getting much better.  With my less discerning palette, I was fine with a full glass!  I bet it will be even better tonight now that it's had some air.  At about 13 months old, I imagine it's about hitting its peak.  I think we'll try it again in another 3 months or so.  It might be even better then.  If not, I will assume it has hit its peak.  Here it is next to our standby, TJ's Coastal (which Megan had to drink).  You really can't beat this Castoro sourced chard for $4.

First Brie Cheese

This Saturday (Jan. 23) I made three little brie's! I think they'll be a lot easier than the bleu, but maybe more of a crapshoot whether they turn out or not.

The curds didn't form as I expected or had seen in the past - more like a ricotta break. So I added more rennett and cooked a little more (with temps ending up higher than I wanted again). Still no good break, so I probably overcooked them (again making it drier than ideal?). Overall, as you can see in the photo, they did come out of the moulds okay (speaking of which, I made moulds from cut-up 2-liter soda bottles and they worked pretty well). I tasted them this morning and it was more of a chevre consistency - sort of reflects the ricotta-type "curd" break. Recipe for all three included 1 gallon of whole milk plus a quart of whipping cream. Maybe the whipping cream is what did it? Both were just pasteurized (not ultra).