Rich, that looks FANTASTIC!
I wish mine would have had more side swelling and less top and bottom swelling. From where I’m sitting yours looks MUCH better than mine did. That is simply a fantastic looking cheese!
As for an update on my own….
Well something happened that I wasn’t expecting.
My cheese kept swelling until one day it seemed to reach critical mass. This happened at a little over three weeks old.
I went to work one day with a nicely inflated wheel of swiss and came home to one that had deflated nearly all the way back to normal.
My THINKING is that the cheese finally blew the holes which left lots of open places (eyes) in the cheese. When I say this is my thinking I mean this is my WISHFUL THINKING.
I really have no way of knowing if this is truly what has happend, but after leaving it on the kitchen counter for another week or so there was no further swelling taking place.
My hope was that the cheese would begin to swell again and the process would then start all over. Since that didn’t take place I gave it a good waxing last night and stuck it in the cave to age for another month or two.
The cheese was still nice and elastic going into the cave, and like yours had a wonderful aroma. I just hope that the inflating/deflating of this cheese means that there will be some “real eyes”, waiting for me.
Please let me know if yours exhibits this same behavior, and thanks for reminding me to give an update on this cheese.
Dave
