End of the Year Cheese – December 26, 2017

Today we made a 10 gallon batch of Cheddar and a 3 gallon batch of Jack. I so often make

cheddar that I had forgotten how easy Jack is to make.  The Jack recipe takes about half the time and we tossed the curds into the mold and pressed for a few hours and it was done. The Cheddar by comparison took another 4 hours to complete.  We did get 11 lbs. of cheddar from 10 gallons of milk  and 3 lbs. of Jack from the 3 gallon batch.  We added 10 drops of annato per gallon of milk to the cheddar to give it a nice yellow look.  The Jack came out fairly white, but this is raw milk and the cheese will always finish darker than with grocery store milk. The only flaw was that the cheddar seemed to finish a bit dry and some was even cracking a bit.  I probably over-cooked in the later stages of getting the curd to shrink. It will be something to look at in 60 days as the cheddar wheels begin to finish.