any one else making cheese?

Hey there..
i have been geeking out making cheese at home.. i started out with soft cheeses and i make fresh yogurt each week... then i ventured into the vast world of hard and pressed cheeses...its amazing and i'm looking for some folks to bounce questions off of and hear stories !

Tags: cheese

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Permalink Reply by Jill McKeever on March 16, 2008 at 8:55am: Mimi makes cheese too!

I'm very interested in understanding what it takes. Will you teach us what you know?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mimi on March 16, 2008 at 1:46pm: Hi Piper!

My significant other and I have been making mozzarella and ricotta for about a year. We just started making yogurt and cream cheese within the last month. Our next challenge will be feta, and we hope to build a cheese press soon so we can venture into the world of cheddar.
We got our book and supplies from www.cheesemaking.com. We have found Ricki (the self proclaimed Queen of Cheese) to be a really good resource.
It's exciting to meet other people who are attempting to make cheese at home. I'm sure we can learn a lot from each other's successes and mistakes!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Piper on March 16, 2008 at 5:19pm: Sounds great and i would be happy to share if anyone has questions... i too am a fan of www.cheesemaking.com! their book, Home CHeese Making has been the best out of the 3 books i started with and supply wise they have been great...and fast.
i just cut into my first gouda that i made after staring at for 3months while it did its aging thing... its tasty and definitely has a gouda flavor, a really kindov sharp one which i'm curious about...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Piper on March 16, 2008 at 5:20pm: p.s.- isn't homemade yogurt and cream cheese insanely different and delicious! i'm hooked.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mimi on March 17, 2008 at 8:50am: Yes indeed! We are going to try to make the next yogurt batch using a culture from the last one, instead of using the culture we order from the website.
I do have a question....
We are planning to start making the harder cheeses, but some of them need to age at a constant temp of 50 degrees. How do you handle that at your house? We were thinking of purchasing a dorm fridge and putting an external thermostat on it set for 50 degrees. I would think there has to be an easier way. Any suggestions?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Piper on March 17, 2008 at 9:03am: i "re-use" the yogurt too...every batch i pull out about 4 Tbs. and keep it aside for the next one.. just make sure you have a culture that can do that, meaning it has the right live cultures.. if you got it from cheesemaking.com it usually says on their ingredients page...i started one packet from them and have been re-using it for over 6months now :)

as for the temp thang... i do exactly that, i had a little dorm fridge and have it on the warmest setting which unfortunatly is usually a bit colder than 50, i'm still trying to figure out if this is ok. I think short of digging a cheese cave in the backyard, this is the best. unless you have a basement or some other place that is cool and dark...
i've been trying to remember that cheeses have been made long before their were fridges and really just stored in caves where the temps must have varied a bit, so i've been trying to work with what i have...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jasmine on March 17, 2008 at 7:43pm: Hi! I am doing/looking for the same! I started this blog a few months ago with the hope of doing just that, but then quickly realized I only had readership in my ever-gracious friends and relatives. So...in the attempt to find more readers with whom I could actually talk about this stuff, I found Great Cooks and then Jill told me about this thread, and then...phew!

Unfortunately I went backwards, hard cheese first. Threw out alotta cheese...now I'm starting with the basic softies and such. And so it goes...looking forward to more...

PS. My understanding of the fridge thing is it won't develop the same flavor as it would at slightly higher temps, while it's not harmful to have it at lower temps. I've got the dorm fridge get-up with the external thermostat...but it's hard to say from experience what difference this truly makes. I have no experience (or little, anyway).; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mimi on March 18, 2008 at 4:25pm: We have pretty much decided to go the fridge/external thermostat route. I doubt I can talk Dev into digging the cheese cave Piper mentioned in her entry... :)
However- it has made for some neat daydreams about my dream kitchen, including a cheese aging/herb drying/wine cellar type basement space! Hope springs eternal....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Piper on March 19, 2008 at 10:21am: so i just got some info back from the lovely''s at cheesemaking.com that i thought i would share... i opened my first gouda this past week after staring at it for 3.5months and had some questions about it... it was tasty. and i could taste the gouda flavor, but it also was a bit sharper than i remember gouda tasting and a bit flakey..also, not how i remembered gouda...
so this is the info i got back from Jim Wallace their tech guru:
"Piper ... what you see here is excessive acid production .. either in the vat from too much culture or from allowing too much moisture in the final cheese at molding (lactose turns into lactic acid)
.. review your notes and either cut back on culture/ripening time or stir the cheese longer for a drier curd at molding.
... this cheese should be quite mellow at final aging"

its really great that they have Jim available and i am going to give this another shot this weekend... i will report back in 3.5 months when i open the next one. oy. cheese making = lots 'o' patience.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Anne on March 20, 2008 at 2:48pm: No, but I'd love to! I've wanted to forever and never got around to it. Maybe soon.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Deeba / Passionate Baker...& beyond on March 22, 2008 at 12:01pm: Hiya Piper. I set fresh yogurt everyday. Absolutely healthy for the kids & they eat bowlfuls after every meal. Have you tried making cottage cheese (called paneer in India)? Also, do you need rennet etc for the cheese you make? Would love to make mascarpone etc but have never got down to it!! Cheese...oops I mean, cheers!!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Piper on March 23, 2008 at 9:29pm: Hey there Deeba...i have made paneer..very tasty and pretty easy to do if you have an idea earlier in the day that you want to have it.. even a few hours can work depending on the way you want to use it...i do use rennet for some of the cheeses i make, cream cheese or neufchatel and i think both of the hard cheese i have tried... mascarpone would be amazing fresh! let me know if you give it a whirl.; ▶ Reply to This