Hi, I just started making cheese a week ago. I’ve wanted to make cheese since I was a kid almost 50 years ago. Of course there was no cheese-making supply houses in Memphis, Tennessee at the time. Eventually I forgot about it. Every now and then I would hear about some special cheese and the desire would return.

A couple of weeks ago I was working and the thought ocurred to me again. This time I thought GOOGLE!

In seconds I was reading about cheese making. I discovered that everyone said I needed the Home Cheesemaking book. I bought it and read it.

Then read it again.

Then studied it.

The book said to start with a soft cheese and mentioned several. Fromage Blanc sounded the most exotic so back to google and I found the place to buy the starter. Turned out to be the author of the book. Cool,

I ordered it and while I waited two days I read and re-read the instuctions.

When it came I made Fromage Blanc. My family went bonkers! Bear in mind that for us exotic cheese was Cracker Barrel. We had never tasted anything like this. We kept trying to describe it, Cream Cheese but with a slight bite of Sour Cream.

OK, it was fantastic. My wife immediately made her version of Paula Deen’s Gooey Butter Cake and used my cheese instead of Cream Cheese. It was oh so marvelous.

So I’m making my second order.

I have some questions that have been bothering me for years and some brand new ones. Could ya’ll answer them for me? I’m busy reading through your site and can say that these haven’t been asked recently at least.

1) Cheddar cheese gets sharper as it ages. Is there an age at which it goes bad? What would that be?

2) If it never goes bad - does it stop getting sharper or does it get sharper and sharper, years after year, until it’s so sharp it draws blood when you smell it?

3) Are there any other books I should read?

4) Fromage Blanc, a little slice of heaven - but what if I added a little flora danica? It’s supposed to make a cheese more buttery. What would happen?

5) I heard that buttermilk can be used for mesophillic starter and yogurt for thermophillic - is that true? If it’s not the SAME then what is the difference? I mean from a practical standpoint.

I’ll stop boring ya’ll now. This weekend I’m making a press and next weekend I’ll probably make more Fromage Blanc and try my first swiss and my first cheddar.

Thanks for listening. I promise I won’t always be so wordy. I’m just so excited about my new hobby.

I’m kind of a newbie myself, only having been making cheese for about 4 months.  Seems to me that the buttermilk and yogurt are substitutes for the real thing.  I started with buttermilk as a starter and the culture I now use is much superior.  More flavor.  I bought my first press, then built two.  My latest is the best.  Can’t answer your question about length of aging, but I would suspect that like with wine, you can only go so far and then the bacteria that do the work for you can no longer survive.  Where that point is may vary a lot.

Anyway, welcome to the cheese making fraternity.  Glad you’re finally fulfilling 50 years of “want to.”

Welcome to the site ! lovely story u tell. Cheddar I know has been aged for 5 years, maybe a search for specialty cheeses would say. I would guess it will age as long as it has moisture. Frankly unless u make a hundred pounds, dont see one being able to wait 5 years or more.
Yogurt and buttermilk are basic simple starters, the “Professional” starters are cultured specifically from “engineered” (natural evolved) cheeses, they impart the cheese characteristics.

Welcome aboard.  I have been using the buttermilk starters pretty much from the get go, and they still make a good cheese.  My next will be a cultured mesophillic starter that I will make a quart of, and freeze as Ice cubes to be used as necessary.  They will last for up to 3 months this way.  I do have a Thermophillic starter that I will have to pitch as they are over 3 months old.  Did use them twice though on swiss.

I was wondering about the buttermilk and yogurt starters. I’m going to go ahead and use the store-bought kind though. My intent is to make at least one wheel of cheddar and one of swiss every month. That way eventually I’ll be able to have a new wheel every month. So I’ll get the reculturable starters.

make sure u keep everything clean, spray everything with a bleach solution so their is no contamination.

Will do.

That’s part of the attraction for me, the attention to detail

I just realized that this would be MONK’s perfect hobby

Not sure if “Monk” and curdled milk would get along.

LOl, I would love to have some land and experiment making cheese all day.

You can find a list of some additional books at:

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