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?

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.

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

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

very nice

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

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.

tomorrow i am going to make swiss wheel (gruyere) out of 40L raw cow milk (10.5 Gallons)