Trying Cheese

It has been a while ago since I bought my cheese trier. Since then I used it once. I have never dared to cut a core out of a cheese, afraid I would damage or contaminate it. But today I decided to give it a try. I have quite a few cheeses aging and I am curious how they are. I figure it will be a good learning curve to taste a cheese at different stages of development.

The first cheese I cored was a washed curd tomme made on July 6. The number imprinted in the rind refers to the batch number. At 3 months, this cheese was well developed and had a good body. The paste was smooth, perhaps a little granular. Being a washed curd cheese, it occurred to me that it had a typical Gouda undercurrent. I will let it age some more, I am sure it will improve with age.

The second wheel I tried was the last batch of blue I made. This was September 7, a sunny day in NYC according to my records. This cheese was made with Ayrshire milk, the breed of choice for my blue cheeses. I used my own homemade Penicillium rocqueforti, which I wrote about here. Initially I was afraid it wasn't working, it took a while for the blue to show up. But the core clearly shows blueing. At six weeks, this cheese is very mild and is definitively in need of some more aging time.

The last cheese I used the cheese trier on was an 8 months alpine style. Made on February 13 from Jersey milk, this cheese is almost ready to be cut into. The paste smells buttery, it has a sweet taste and it melts on the tongue. Being a cheese made from winter milk, the paste is a little pale.

Swollen Gouda

This is the Gouda I made on December 6 and wrote about here. It is obviously swelling up due to gas formed by the Clostridium tyrobutyricum bacteria. I started to see the first signs about two weeks ago and now one of the cheeses is even showing cracks.
Apparently there is a product on the market called Holdbac, which has proven to inhibit growth of undesired microoganisms. It is said to have a positive effect on cheese flavour and texture. Thus it can be used instead of saltpeter which is known to prevent cheese blowing. I spoke to a well respected cheese maker and supplier recently who suspected that the Dutch use saltpeter in great quantities in their Goudas and Edams. They feed the cows a lot of silage, the main cause of the gas forming bacteria. I remember it well. Growing up, all over the Dutch countryside were these heaps of fermenting grass, covered with black plastic weight down by old tires.
In most parts of Switzerland and France it is forbidden to feed the cows on silage to produce an AOC cheese.

Gouda

As the farmer of the jersey cows is currently feeding his cows on dry hay only, I decided this is a good time to try some more Gouda. My first attempt of this cheese was not a great success due to the fermented food the cows had been fed. It has been more than a week now and I haven't seen any evidence of gas formation in the cheeses. I keep my fingers cross, because I made an Alpine style cheese yesterday and it can suffer the same damage.

Washed Goudas

Some washed Goudas on the lower shelf

Gouda

Goudas with some mould


and washed

Gouda rind

Some more Gouda rind

Gouda rind development

In the previous post I discussed the result of the Goudas. This and some following posts contain some belated pictures of the rind development.
The picture below shows a cheese in various stages. The first two are of a one week old cheese followed by a picture of the same cheese a day later before washing. One can see the molds slowly developing on the rind.
The photographs thereafter show the cheese in various stages of development. Over time, different molds develop on the rind. For practical reasons I only washed the cheeses once a week. Hence the relatively heavy mold development.

Gouda with holes

Late July/ beginning August I made my first Goudas, shown above at about two months old. Underneath is a picture of the cut cheese at three months and it shows lots of holes. Now a Gouda might have a few holes, but this many holes is not typical. The taste, as well as the odor are not typical Gouda.
I suspect, and some professional cheese makers I consulted concur, that the milk I used contained gas forming bacteria. These organisms, called Clostridium tyrobutyricum, can be in the milk when cows are fed fermented food such as silage. As far as I know, the cows I got the milk from weren't fed this, they were out on pasture. The farmer does feed them some corn during milking time and most likely some of this might have been fermented.
Before cutting the cheese, I already had a suspicion that there might be holes in the cheese. The wheel in the picture above looks swollen which is a sign of gas formation.
Although these cheeses taste nothing like Gouda, they are rather tasteful. One cheese maker mentioned Tilsit as a comparable cheese. The cheese is sharp and pungent, it reminds myself of some trappist cheeses I have had.

Another Gouda or two

I have made some more Goudas. Here are a few images of the process. I added some thermophilic starter to this batch. We'll what this will do to the taste.