Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

Cheese Cave

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I had a request the other day to show my cheese cave that I talk about quite often.  Well, I dug up this old post (June 2009)  from The Greening of Gavin, when I wrote about the day I received this vital piece of cheese making equipment.

Up until now, I have not been able to make rind cheeses like Parmesan or Gruyère.  Nor have I even thought about making mould ripened cheeses like Camembert, Stilton or Gorgonzola.

That is until now!  After a fair bit of discussion on my part, and much research on Kim’s part, we are now the proud owners of a Cheese Fridge.  OK, I confess.  It is really a wine fridge with the racks replaced so that cheese will sit on it flat!  I believe that we paid $295, and unfortunately had to buy it new because we couldn’t find a cheap, economical one on eBay or in the trading post.  Freecycle did have a normal fridge but it would have been too hard to change the thermostat to get it up to the temperatures required to ripen cheese.

That aside, it has the right temperature range, it is very economical using about 0.4 kWh per day (yet to measure a full day so this may be lower), and it has a nice light.  I have set it to 12°C (nice cheese weather), and will check the energy statistics tomorrow night.

Being on Solar PV, I don’t expect it to be much of a strain on our resources.  Kim found some powder coated racks that were laying in the cupboard which fit very well.  I had to bend the ends so that they fit, but at least I can lay sushi mats down for the rind ripened cheeses and plastic mats for mould-ripened cheese to rest on.

This will allow us to make and ripen cheese all year around, and to be able to make all types of cheese and not just waxed ones.  So far in the fridge we have two wheels of Pepper Jack, a Pyrenees with green peppercorns, a Wensleydale sage, half a wheel of Gouda, and a quarter of a wheel of the original Wensleydale.

As you can see I left in two bottle racks just in case I find some local Red Wine worth storing.  The image below is taken without the flash on.  You can see the temperature and the little LED light that you can turn on/off when necessary.  I placed a normal thermometer in the fridge just to see if it was reading accurately.  It is about 1 degree higher, but that could be my crappy thermometer as well.

Once the other types of cheese matures and I get a few friends to taste test, I will investigate what it will take to sell some at a local farmers market.  I know I have to get a food handling certificate, but other than that I am clueless about the procedure.  Of course I won’t sell it all, but it might be a bit of extra pocket-money in the future.  I have a mould-ripened cheese making course on the 21st June, so the fridge arrived just in time.

Who knows where this may lead?  Wallace and Gromit might come over for a visit and a nice piece of Wensleydale!

I now have a hygrometer in the cave so I can tell if it is humid enough. It works well, as does the method for increasing the humidity, but that is a post for tomorrow!

Big Cheese

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I have been busy making cheese today.  So what is new you probably think to yourselves, you always make cheese Gavin.Well, I have been making big cheese, or big batches of cheese.  You see, now that I have a 14 litre pot and two cheese presses, I can make double the amount of cheese in the same time frame as it used to take me to make just one.  I am so glad that I “upsized” my equipment, because now I seem to always have cheese at hand, and some left over should friends want to buy some from or to give away as gifts. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like home-made cheese!

Last weekend, I made two Caerphilly cheeses, and the week before that, I made the biggest Parmesan that I have ever made.

The only problem I have is that it has been so cold here of late, that the cheese will not dry and form a rind.  The Caerphilly above, which are the two wheels at the front, have been sitting at room temperature for 7 days, and have only formed a slight rind on the edges.  Because they have been moist, I have had to wash with brine to inhibit mould growth.

Not so bad though for the Parmesan at the back.  Because it is a brine dipped cheese, the rind forms really easily, with minimal mould formation.  I will wax it this week, as I find this helps it from drying out.  As for the Caerphilly, I will wait for the rind, and then put them in the cheese cave for a few more weeks before vacuum packing them to stop them from aging further.

Today, because it was raining heavily and I couldn’t do much outside, I decided to make another big Parmesan.  It took me about 4 hours from milk to press (as shown above), and tomorrow I will brine it for 24 hours.  In ten months it will taste absolutely delicious!

This morning, Kim found some Feta in the fridge that I had made about 3 months ago, still in the brine and looking very healthy.  I tried a little and found it to be sharp, very edible, with a crumbly texture to the cut, but when spread on toast it was smooth and creamy and delicious.  I remember following my standard recipe for this one, and it just goes to show that if kept submerged in brine in a sealed container, Feta can last for a long time.  Now that we have discovered this, I think I will age all of my Feta for this long!

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