Farmhouse Goat Chive Cheddar – August 28th

I recently started watching a cheese class from Craftsy.com by  Mary Karlin. She makes 3 different basic cheeses. The third in the series is a Farmhouse cheddar I decided to make with goat milk.

The recipe is pretty simple, milk to 86, add mesophilic culture, annatto, calcium chloride, and rennet.  The curd cut is 1/2 inch, with a 5 min rest.

Heat to 120°, then stir for 15-20 minutes. Then a 30 minute set before draining.  The mix in salt, dried chives and then press.

The recipe calls for very light weight. 5 pounds for the first hour and 8 pounds over night. I started with 8 and finished with 15 pounds. My curds seemed a little stiff and I wanted a good shape from the wheel. The recipe calls for salt in the curds as well as a 6 hour brining. The cheese can be waxed or bandaged after 24 hours of drying. The aging is 4-8 weeks.

After making several different cheeses, I found an interesting point in this recipe.  The step is to raise the temperature to 102° without stirring. Even though I was using a water bath, this step had the effect of overheating the curds on the bottom.  You can see from the photo that the curds are already in a big hunk. They seemed to turn out okay, but they were difficult to stir as a couple big hunks.

After draining the Whey, I mixed in the salt (2 1/2 tsp). It was ready for the press. As stated above, I used a little more weight than the recipe called for due to the stiffness of the curds already. I flipped it a couple times when it was convenient and left it over night before removing from the press.

I waited for it to dry for 24 hrs. before placing into the frig. The original plan was to wax after 2 days, but life gets in the way and it waited 6 days to wax.

I cut the wheel in half as it looked pretty dry and I was afraid it was ruined.  I pulled a couple slices out of the middle to test and it tasted fine.  My son didn’t like rind, oh well.  I waxed both halfs and but into the frig.  Hope to eat in a month or so.

Updated: We ate the first half of this cheese at a party (9/23,15) and it was wonderful! It was neon orange as I added a few extra drops on Annatto, of course that didn’t change the taste, but it did make it sort of funny looking.