Post by Shibumi-Mandeville I-12/Hwy59 on Dec 2, 2021 18:27:35 GMT -6
Day 2 of Camembert cheese making. Forgot to weigh them but I am making two wheels from a bit less than 2 gallons of whole milk. My pot couldn't hold a full 2 gallons.
I'm guessing around a pound each. Will get a bit lighter as it loses whey.....but it's pretty solid already.
Post by Shibumi-Mandeville I-12/Hwy59 on Dec 11, 2021 9:11:51 GMT -6
Just an FYI.....for anyone who has a need to more precisely control a refrigerator like I am for cheese aging, or wine, here is what I've found out.
Even a wine cooler doesn't do particularly well at maintaining a tight spread of temps between it's compressor on and off cycles. I should point out though that the more stuff you have in the cooler (mass) the less fluctuation you will get....but I will not be stuffing mine full, so for me this is an accurate representation.
Solution? A $15 outlet controller. This is the one I have.
The next image shows the temp and humidity of the wine cooler out of the box. The set temp is 49F. You can see the fluctuations of temp and humidity for each compressor cycle.
Next I plugged it into the outlet controller set at 1 minute on, 10 minutes off. You can see how tight the conditions of the cooler are now. I haven't tweaked it yet to the temp I want as I have nothing in it at the moment (the wrong model was delivered so I will be getting the replacement next week).
Anyway, cool stuff, pun intended.
I considered whether the off/on would affect the life of the cooler, but the compressor already goes off and on, so hopefully, there isn't an issue with how I am doing this.
Post by Shibumi-Mandeville I-12/Hwy59 on Dec 28, 2021 13:00:01 GMT -6
The tale of two cheeses.
So my aforementioned debut cheese making effort yielded two 18oz cheese wheels.
One seemed to be softening first, so I took it to Texas in an ice chest...cut it open on the 24th and more than half was just runny and useless....we ate the firmer bits on crustinis with fig jam and prosciutto. It was good.
Cheese folks said maybe I didn't drain it properly and that was the result, but that explanation doesn't jive as I just cut the second wheel and it's perfect!
Post by Shibumi-Mandeville I-12/Hwy59 on Jan 10, 2022 13:39:25 GMT -6
Finally got around to cheddar making.
This image is after the first press at 20 lbs for 1 hr. Not very pretty. Compared to tutorial (which I only found after the fact!), I realized I had not broken the curds as small during the salting phase, so my first press was a little blocky.
The next shot is midway through the final press at 65lbs. As you can see, gravity and weight have nicely pulled (or pushed rather) it together. Will remove from mold after last flip later today for 2 days of drying bedore waxing.