Aging Goat Cheese

Some goat cheeses in various stages of development.

Goat cheese

Six gallons of raw Alpine goat's milk


Look at that virgin white color. Goat milk is white because goats produce milk with the yellow beta-carotene converted to a colorless form of vitamin A.


Adding the rennet


Mixing the rennet


Dry-salting

Tomme

Here is my so far all time favorite. Made on August 7, it was about 50 days old when I first tried it. It has a moist and creamy texture and a grassy and nutty milky flavor.

Stilton style result

A few weeks ago I cut the Stilton I made on April 29. I had changed the recipe a little because the cheese I had made previously from the same recipe turned out to dry. This has resulted in a white Stilton. There was no air in the cheese even though I poked it so the Penicillium roqueforti did not develop. Here and there I can see the vague presence of the mold. Nevertheless, it is a very fresh tasting cheese, not as salty as a blue cheese can be but but certainly creamy and somewhere, you can taste a lingering blue.

Cheese in the Dryer

Being short a proper aging box and lacking the time to make one, I have temporary reverted to using a unused dryer as an aging cave. My other aging cave in Brooklyn is still to warm, I am longing for cooler temperatures. So far it has worked alright, but practically it is a little bit of a hassle to shelf them. And with all these heat producing cheeses in the dryer, it is getting pretty warm inside the drum. Therefore I have been putting ice packs in it as can be seen in the third picture.

Goat's Milk

I am very excited. I have found a source of goat's milk. Although the goats are almost at the end of their lactation cycle, I have been able to make some goat cheese. I have been using some tomme recipes for goat's milk because I am not ready yet to make more traditional type bloomy rind goat cheeses. It is to warm and currently my time is too limited to apply the longer process of making these cheeses. But with plenty of preparation time this winter, I shall be ready coming spring to jump into that most exciting process.