Gruyere
Posted: 23 June 2008 03:56 PM   [ Ignore ]
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I made a Gruyere this weekend.  I did the final pressing at about 148lbs for about 24 hours.

While I am for the most part happy with the results of getting an nice, dense wheel using four gallons of whole milk.

I put it in cold brine solution and left it on the counter for 24 hours.  When I removed it, I had all these fissures on the top and bottom and cracks on the sides.

Anyone know what may have caused this to happen or what I could do to prevent it next time?

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Posted: 23 June 2008 10:38 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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LOL, looks great. Sounds like the problems we have been having as in too much acid making the curds crumbly. Take a piece if u can and drop it on a hot frying pan and see if it melts, if it does not then its the high acid problem.

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The Cheese Hole

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Posted: 24 June 2008 07:58 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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I’ve gotta admire the creativity you demonstrated in getting all that balanced on your press.

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Rich

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Posted: 24 June 2008 08:27 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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Green Cheese Maker - 24 June 2008 12:58 PM

I’ve gotta admire the creativity you demonstrated in getting all that balanced on your press.

balancing it is an art smile

very nice

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Posted: 24 June 2008 08:42 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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it is acid issue again, swiss type of cheese has four critical points:


1- proper cooking to get ride of most of the lactose (and lactic acid).
2- draining should should should be before any low then pH 6.4, which means very little or like not acid development at all, to retain the high calcium.
3- after pressing pH should never goes bellow 5.2 - 5.4
4-imagine that after 9 month of aging the pH goes up again to 5.6 - 5.9

all above will give you sweet nutty elastic shiny cheese, yummy

cheers

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Posted: 24 June 2008 06:15 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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Thanks for the information on the pH levels.  Right now, I don’t have a way to measure pH, but something it looks like I need to solve soon.

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Posted: 26 June 2008 01:45 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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tomorrow i am going to make swiss wheel (gruyere) out of 40L raw cow milk (10.5 Gallons)

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