Here is a pic of the cheeses when I open up the *true* Mistem cheese (which was on Tuesday):
Because they are a bit hard too see, I made some closeups today. Here is the piece that is currently remaining of the left hand cheese:
That gives you a pretty good idea of the texture of the cheese. I had another taste today and it's actually improving rapidly. It's getting sharper. Still not like a Caerphilly... It's hard to describe. Some Parmesian notes are coming out. It's actually very nice at the moment. Of course, once you cut the cheese, the development is completely different, so I have no idea what the other cheeses will do while they are still closed. But at least it provides some verification that the cheese needs age. I'm a bit worried that the salt level will be a bit too high on the next cheeses (as I brined them a little bit differently than the oldest one) -- so if you are doing this, I might cut back the brining time to 20 minutes for 500 ml and 45 for 1 litre. More info next week when I open the next cheese.
This is a close up of the next cheese I will eat. You can see that it's a bit pink in one of the holes on the side. Also it's pinkish in the grooves on top. That's mould called brevibacterium linens. It's a mould that makes cheese very stinky, but also very delicious. It's intentional on washed rind cheeses like meunster, epoisse, teleggio, etc. It's not what I'm going for here, but it's not necessarily bad (and I've kept it under control with brine washes). I'm pretty sure the mould got introduced by a cheese mat that I didn't sanitise properly. I've since fixed that and I don't seem to be getting the mould on my new cheeses.
Here's the next one after that (which I will probably eat when it is 5-6 weeks old. You'll notice this one is formed a little nicer than the previous one. I made some changes to my mould (the form) which helped (slightly bigger holes on the side). Also you can see that the top is flat (the bottom is still grooved from the bamboo cheese mat that I used when forming the cheese).
And finally here is the youngest and tallest one:
This one was made with 1 litre of homogenised milk, so it is taller. It's having a real problem drying out, though... It's been over 2 weeks and it *still* hasn't dried out. I'm not entirely sure why. But the result has been that it's picked up some more mould. I washed it today and took off a bit of blue mould (which I didn't take a picture of -- I probably should have). The mould comes off super easily, so it's not a problem at all.
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Topic: The Littlest Cheesemaker - Updated 12/07/2022 (Read 1861386 times)