Lactic Goat Cheese With Ash

While making some lactic goat cheeses from the curd I have been describing recently, I covered a few cheeses with ash. This time I did not use ash, but charcoal. I was wondering what is used traditionally. There is obviously a difference; ash is burnt material while charcoal is partly burnt. After seeing some images from ash (cendre) coated cheeses, it occurred to me that the coating seemed black (the color of charcoal) rather than gray, the color of ash. 

So I got some charcoal from our wood stove and ground it in a pestle and mortar. I covered the cheeses with this. We'll see what happens.