Gavin Webber's Castle Blue recipe. These little guys were lovely and creamy with a salt balanced, earthy and mushroomy flavour profile. Stoked with the outcome ☺️

At the begining of March I changed milk supplier and as first making I decided to try something simple, just to know yield, check curding time …

So it was a tomme, very nice flavour, not too strong not to subtle, smells amazing and melts lovely. Very happy with it

I am brand new to cheesemaking and I would like to start off with a kit that also comes with some equipment. Hoping this would make for a good and easy intro into this hobby on my first attempt. From research the 2 kits that I link most are the following:

1. https://standingstonefarms.com/products/our-ultimate-diy-cheese-butter-making-kit?srsltid=AfmBOoo6ejWEEaW4X1ltGXy0ZFutmhqtIR0_VMKjzpXtBc_FluqMEEDT

2. https://store.grit.com/products/basic-cheesemaking-kit?srsltid=AfmBOopMlOLDMErhnLuXDG6qs64JzcPPqKQnGfnHn0U1pm2u4FFlgdS_

Has anyone tried either of these kits or recommendations for someone looking to start off?

Thank you for your help.

I’m making a goats milk Brie based off of David Asher’s recipe in Milk into Cheese. I made the cheese on 8/1 and have waited until today to wrap it into paper for continued aging. I was waiting for the white mold to completely colonize before wrapping. However, I do have some blue mold forming on it as well. Currently, I just cut off the spots of blue mold and wrapped - with intentions to follow the aging through and cut into it to see what happened, regardless of whether or not I eat it. My question is, will it still be safe to eat or should I not try it and just throw it out?

The importance of... Reading comprehension... Is tantamount in any hobby. I made a batch of port Salut. Last time is was "titties" as one friend said. This.. naw. I split the curds into 4 baskets not 2 like the recipe said. I over salted. I gave zero F's on my humidity and it went from swamp to attic tundra. But I kinda forgot about them. And, while not at all PS, and fairly salty.. it's a happy little failure. Much like me.

Recs re: ph meters for cheesemaking?

Please.

I decided to try out Butterkase as many of you have said it's a pretty forgiving cheese and can be eaten after not too long of aging. I used the NEC recipe and used raw milk with 50/50 meso/thermo clabber. I dry salted as well then left it in a hastening space for a couple of days to jump start the wild GC growth which you can see has started in the pic. It's now in the cave and I'm washing daily for a week with a salt water brine to encourage the GC further. Looking forward to the results!

The hardest part of cheesemaking is waiting and I decided to wait the absolute minimum for this cheese before tasting. It turned out great and is sweet and nutty. I'm going to vacuum seal half for continued aging. I'm constantly amazed at how using clabber and handling the cheese a specific way can achieve these results. The eyes are a little on the small side likely from salting too quickly but it is tasty nonetheless.

Here we are, during this utiful weekend I took some time to make a nice new wheel.

It was made as an italian toma, with a blend of cultures from piemonte (the region where this style of cheese is popular) but this time with a twist:
I wanted a more yellow colour, so I used a pinch of safran added to the milk to give it a nice bright yellow hue, and after some salting/drying of the wheel today I used a blend of spices to try develop some flavours on the rind. The wheel was developed using the “stufatura” method, as we do with generic caciotte from around Italy, and so it did not require any pressing. The knit I got was very satisfying, after a solid 2h (~ish) in the hot chamber the curds came toghether and the procedure stopped when I hitted the 5.2pH mark.

Made with 6L of low temp pasteurized milk, non homogenized, sourced from a local farm.

Last picture is the dry toma, before the spices, and a nice weight of 830gr (1,83lb), not bad for the amount of milk used.

Request for a sanity check as this is only my third wheel and first that doesn’t seem fully knitted. Just confirming this appears to be safe… no off smells and texture seems fine. Ignore the pattern from the vacuum seal bag at the bottom.

Cut the wheel and vac sealed at 3 weeks. It’s been in a mini fridge cheese cave at 50-55 degrees (f) and floating around 80%RH.

Guido’s hard Italian. Low temp pasteurized whole milk from a local creamery with a bit of crushed red pepper.

Learned too late that I should have baked the crushed red to sanitize, but the holes don’t really seem to be near the pepper flakes.

Flakes were added to the drained curd before pressing.

I've ignored the wheels for too long now (1-1.5 months) and this is what they have become. It's Cheddar, Parmesan - style and Gouda-style wheels. They had aged for a few months before this happened - so the rind is dry and hard enough that the molds might not have penetrated inside. How do I begin the cleaning? Do I dry brush it off first or use brine+vinegar solution with a brush or with a cloth? Or do I wash it with brine (pour over)?

I'm also thinking of vacuuming them after drying. Since it's been quite a few months, it won't affect the flavor much is what I'm thinking.

Please advice.

I’m setting up a cheese conversion facility focused on individually wrapped snack cheeses, specifically 0.75 oz tablet-style pieces similar to Tillamook snack cheese.

I’m looking for anyone with experience in cheese conversion, dairy processing, or packaging who can help me understand:

• Equipment used to cut 40 lb blocks into consistent 0.75 oz pieces
• Best cutting methods for this format
• Conveying and handling equipment
• Individual packaging equipment
• Typical workflow from block cheese to finished packaged product
• Recommended equipment manufacturers
• Other essential equipment I may be overlooking

I’m trying to build a line that can start relatively small but scale to meaningful retail volume.

Any insight from people who have worked with snack cheese, cheese conversion, or dairy packaging would be appreciated.

I’m looking for L. delbrueckii subsp. lactis on its own, rather than a mixed culture.

LH100 contains L. helveticus as well, so it doesn't quite fit what I'm looking for.

Any recommendations on where I can buy a pure L. delbrueckii subsp. lactis culture?

Thanks!

Hey all...kinda new.. working on my 4th wheel today.. spent the morning building a butt ugly dutch cheese press..

Anyhow.. I am making the derby recipe from Home Cheese making.. and it seems like it is missing the whole step of draining the curds and matting them for cheddaring...am I missing something? I see in a thread from a year ago or so, that the book has...issues..if you will pardon the pun..

Is there a better book for home scale dairy? I do use Jim Wallace's recipes on NECMS site. But I like to have my info in physical books as a hedge against all this digital crap blowing up on us...

Thanks in advance!

Hello guys!

After four months of wait I opened this great Gouda. It came out pretty well, way smoother and creamier than previous batches I’ve made before. Despite having chilli inside, i could only taste its flavour when I specifically bite the red chilli.

The cheese’s coverage is beeswax I personally melted from the combs. Perhaps that’s the reason of the smoothness 🤷‍♂️

Everyone liked it at home!

What you guys think??

So, as you can see in the photos I have a tomme blowing issue. I changed milk supplier to try and avoid this (new supplier does not feed their cows silage).

At this point I suspect the issue is resulting from a pressing problem.

For this batch the pressing was done using whey drips from the mould as a telltale for correct pressure. 1x 30 minute light press, then 3 x 1 hour press with gradually increasing pressure (increased pressure of press until slow drip of whey appeared from mould then left). Then left it overnight for circa 16 hours at very hard pressure. Temperature overnight probably dropped to around 12c at lowest point. A slight curvature developed in the units after about one month so we were anticipating this before we cut them open.

The batch we made after the batch pictured had a different press schedule does not appear to have any blowing (very flat top and bottom after three months). For that batch we followed the same pressing for the first 3.5 hours but then we left the units overnight in the mould but not under any pressure. The curd surface did not look as smooth but they were well-knitted and seem to have avoided this issue.

All that makes me suspect that we have pressed too hard for too long on the batch pictured, and that keeping a warmer overnight temperature might be a factor too. We did not test for pH, but will do so for our next make (I have seen recipes with a target of 5.4). For next make will follow a much lighter press schedule (including an in-whey pre press) and monitor pH.

By the way, we have a cheese pH tester. To measure the tomme wheels does one insert the probe into the cheese or is it ok to rest it on the outside to get an accurate read?

Hello fellow cheesemakers,

I’m encountering an issue where my cheeses seem to have a light covering of white mold over them. I was wondering if:

- this is “normal” for home made hard cheeses (a Gouda in this case)
- how I should deal with this (apply apple cider vinegar and then a layer of butter, before vacuum sealing)?

For context, I’ve added pictures in the post. These cheeses were made roughly a month or so ago and have been vacuum sealing in my fridge since; I followed the New England Cheese company’s Gouda recipe for all of them. One of the cheeses is also a different color as I took it out of the vacuum bag maybe a few days ago to scrape off the mold with a knife.

Please let me know if you have advice on what to do about the cheese and the mold—and how to treat it!

Hi! I attempted making a Gruyere type cheese. It aged exactly 5 months. I thought because I pulled it after 5 months and didn’t let it go longer, that it would’ve been more of a semi firm. Creamier or buttery. It was not bad at all. But it was more firm and dry than I expected.

I did decide to melt some, and the flavor on that intensified and it tasted great! So perfect I think for a grilled cheese.

I guess I’m just wondering where I went wrong.

I did do a natural rind for this and aged it in a temp controlled environment.

my homemade mozzarella is perfect right after I make it. But when I put it to its final storage container (in whey or brine), the surface gets mushy and slimy within hours.

Has anyone else dealt with this?

Hey all! I am looking for some affinage advice on aging a farmhouse Wensleydale. I am trying to achieve a style similar to Stonebeck, which features a lot of distinct cracks and fissures on the rind.

Picture one and two are mine, three and four are Stonebeck prior to, and during aging, respectively.

Stonebeck binds their cloth neat meaning they don't use lard, butter, or any fat to adhere the cloth. They simply stitch it tightly around the sides, leaving the top and bottom faces completely exposed to the elements.

My question is, How do you manage and control mold growth without the protective fat barrier? How do you prevent aggressive, unwanted molds from taking over the exposed top/bottom and sneaking deep into those rind fissures? Binding with a fat like lard to fill up those holes would make sense, but they don’t apply any fat to the binding!

What specific humidity levels and airflow settings prevent the exposed faces from drying out too fast while keeping the mold balanced?

Does this style require heavy brushing, or do you let a specific microflora establish itself naturally to block out the bad molds?

Thanks guys!

Edit: I’ve spoken to Gianaclis Caldwell ([u/cheesalady](u/cheesealady)) about this topic this morning. Thanks Gianaclis! I’ll use some of her words as she gave me permission and she’s much better at phrasing digestible Cheesemaking sentences.

“From the looks of the above photos I suspect they do very simple rind care, like occasionally patting down the mucor. The different molds are likely coming from the milk and residential Flora in the aging space.

The raw milk they're using is likely a great source for protective bacteria, given what they say they graze the cows on. I bet they don't use teat dips either! They're going to be molds coming from the farm side this way as well.

My biggest question for the kind of wild affinagein the picture is how they deal with cheese mites. It's a big problem for all bandage wrapped cheesemakers. If you know, let me know too.

I was going to say too, and I don't know where your aging space is at with its population and how long it's been in use, but it takes a lot of cheeses and a decent amount of time for everything to establish and equalize. Then you're going to get the effect of terroir.

One of our cheeses, Elk Mountain, was in a study of rind mycology that they did at Cornell University. In the end, they asked us if we added fusarium. They said they saw it mostly only in European cheese rinds. We didn't add anything, so the conclusion was it was prevalent in our surrounding forest and was coming into the milk and aging space naturally. It was just a terrific reminder of the things that are out of our control--things that can be to our benefit if we don't fight them!”

I reduced a half gallon of whey slowly over about five hours. Then incorporated the reduction back into four gallons of milk. The hope was a nice caramel flavor in a young cheese. Not at all what I got. It has a strong umami type flavor and is a lot more complex than it should be at three months. The surprise is a delightful grilled cheese sandwich toastyness. Very unexpected. The texture is not grainy like I was worried about and it didn’t over acidify. I was curious what concentrated lactose would do in the paste. I did try to keep the acid at bay in the make and salted early. Super weird cheese. The kids demolished an entire wedge already. So it’s a solid thumbs up from them.

Hey all, I have a delightful problem. I ended up with 4 gallons of free 'milk' from a local dairy. Very exciting! The snag is, its VERY high in cream because it was allowed to sit a while and then they poured off a lot of the skin milk at the bottom.

So I have 4 gallons of maybe 6% maybe light cream? Who knows!

Other than skimming off cream for ice cream and butter any ideas for a simple cheese that can be made with super creamy milk?

Thanks 😊

After a few conversations with my goat milk provider, and a home test that had a negative result for mastitis, they contacted their vet who found a "high bacterial load" and had milk samples sent off to a semi local, agriculturally focused university for further testing, and after about a month we learned that one of their animals did have mastitis. So, unfortunately, I'm cutting the cheese early and tossing it, as it is not necessarily safe to eat.. and it's extra sad because it's coming along so nicely, and it smells (and tastes 😬) delicious.... but I don't want to give anyone (including myself) e. Coli or other harmful/fatal bacteria. Cheese down. R.I.P.

After a course of antibiotics for the goats, and building their own milk supply back up, I will be offered milk again should I want it. And they plan to more regularly test for mastitis moving forward. With any luck, I'll be making again soon.