Hi Everyone,
I was over the moon to find this forum on cheesemaking!! I could have done with this when I was first starting out roughly 6 months ago and learning from scratch. I’m Rachel, 29 year old, 30 in March (sobbing loudly) and I live near Newcastle in North East England. I’ve only been browsing for a few days so I’m not sure if most of you are American.
I used to make my own wines at home then stopped for a while; this past year I’ve been growing veg in pots and this lead me onto cheesemaking (it was only a matter of time)
I’ve only made hard cheeses so far, I didn’t read till a few months later that its easier to start with soft cheeses first and work your way up! I built my own cheese press at home using 2 pieces of wood and 4 metal threaded rods. After 6 months I’m only now on the way to doing the whole process correctly after trial and error. I had 3 cheddars aging, but seriously cocked it up by keeping them in the coldest room in the house (was no where near cold enough!) so for up to a month they tasted fine… then after a month they suddenly turned ‘off’. I’ve corrected the problem by buying a mini fridge today so I can now age my cheeses without worrying too much.
I’ll post some pics up on here soon. I wish I’d started this years ago. Its a lot of work but great fun!!!!!!!!
Welcome to the group!, looking forward to your input. I thingk its the best way to go learning trial by error. Allot of us are form all over the world so not mainly US
There are members from all over the world, so this forum is not US-focused. That is something I’m really happy about. A few people are “indispensable” members because they are always there to help with anything you may ask—which is good because I don’t have the time I used to have to participate.
There are a few additional resources at the web site that launched this forum, but it is not maintained much either:
welcome to the cheese-making lovers
I found out that cheese making is the most enjoyable hobby for me, even i just started it few months ago… and this forum is like google to me, i have to check it every time i open my web browser ....
Thanks so much for the replies, cheese making is addictive I must admit (a good thing really otherwise people would never keep persevering and perfecting them!) I was away for 2 weeks staying with friends over the Christmas and New Year. The main thing I was looking forward to returning home to?? Yep, making another batch of cheese haha.
In six months, the only cheese I’ve attempted is farmhouse cheddar, I’ve decided to stick to the same one until its done properly. Now that I have a mini fridge, the next batch will be ‘the one’ hehe.
The only soft cheese I’ve made so far is Kefir cheese but that doesn’t count as all it requires is draining the kefir milk overnight, the flavour was so strong, I had to add a couple of dollops of double cream to tone it down!
Love this forum!!!! I’ll be on again soon with pics as soon as I download them
Love,
Rach xxxx
Welcome to the group! As a new member myself, I can tell you that the folks found on this site are a friendly bunch and always more than willing to help out with questions.
Thats the first thing that grabbed my attention when I first seen this forum, the people all seem so unusually friendly and helpful for an internet forum these days. I didn’t think there were any left with normal human beings using them!
I used to be a member of a Buddhist forum… some of the most grotesque human beings reside in there! I’m gonna download some pics tonight hopefully and gonna have a go at a simple Chevre this evening, I’m in hospital tomorrow to discuss heart surgery to have a hole in my heart blocked with a device (I might be only 29 but I’ve had the bad health of a 90 year old since age 4 so mentally I’m probably closer to 50 or 60
Has anyone made a basic Chevre, ie cultured then drip dried so to speak? Unless curd cutting is involved I generally don’t think of it as cheesemaking. I just wanted to try something simple for a change xxxx
Its basically a goat cream cheese. U make a yogurt and then drain for 6-12 hours and add herbs if u like and spread on your fav bread.
Hope all goes well for you
Hmmm, that called Labaneh, which is not cheese, it is dried yogurt ...
try make cheese by adding meso starter to your milk (with CaCl2 if it is not raw) and rennet then keep warm arround 20C for 24 hours until it firms, then drain it in cloth, then salt and herbs and enjoy it
yeah I thought it just sounded like dried yoghurt, i’m merely using the recipe in Cheese Making book which calls it Chevre using chevre starter. Needed to keep my meso for the new batch of cheddar I’m making tomorrow. The chevre has been draining for 6 hours so far and not a scrap of flavour so far, will leave it the full 12 hours but it may need flavouring just to make it edible. Think I’ll stick with cheddars for now hehe.
Just found out that a hole that I have in my heart is so large that its too big to use the usual device that they use to block them, so I may be looking at open heart surgery before my 30th in March. Oh joy!!! wonder if I could use a bit of cheddar to bung the hole hehehehe xxxx
I used to use it for Greek garlic dip with cucumber (cant spell it so not going to try) used to live of it. Also just adding salt and ground dehydrated tomato or bell peppers tastes real good.
Yipeeee, success. Relief. After 6 hours of draining it had no flavour, so I left it the full 12 hours…. tastes lovely!!!! very mild flavour with the texture of cottage cheese, I only added salt last night but will experiment with other things today. So pleased that one turned out nice, can do it again now
Right I’m off to do my next cheddar today Doing 5 litres of milk (thats the maximum amount my pan will take) At least I know the aging process will work now with my mini fridge. I thought I had pics of my homemade press but it seems I don’t so I’ll take some today xxxx
