On Saturday, we tasted our cheddar dated July 7th 2003. We expected great things, since it was well aged, however, it proved to be disappointing. It was quite sharp to taste, but far too dry, and although not hard, could easily have been mistaken for a parmesan.

We are wondering if you have any thoughts as to why a Farmhouse cheddar could turn out to be so dry (our others have been excellent!)? The only difference here was that we used only a gallon of milk (not our usual 2 gallons), and we adjusted the starter and rennet (and calcium chloride) accordingly. This was the first (and only) time that we have made a 1 lb cheese - all our others have been 2 lbs.

We bought some goat’s milk on Saturday and would be interested to know if you have a favorite goat’s milk cheese that we might try.

Best wishes - Wendy & Simon

I hope some other viewers comment, because I’ve had this problem too. Still, I’ll “brainstorm” some thoughts for you.

Moving to a 1# cheese might be part of the problem, there is simply less moist curd to start with, the cheese is thinner, etc.

My guess is that the cheese was “over rennetted”—perhaps you did not need the CaCl as a booster? If you were using fresh milk (as I recall you do) and fresh rennet, then maybe the CaCl was not needed? Maybe even less rennet was needed as you adjusted amounts to the 1 gallon recipe?

I suppose the cheese might also have been “over pressed”, I suppose this could be done with a smaller cheese, extracting too much whey and leaving the curd dry.

Was the cheese waxed?

You have lots of choices with the goat’s milk. I often prefer fresh cheeses that don’t get pressed and can be eaten within days. If you want to try it in a hard cheese, try making a Parmesan and use one gallon of cow and one gallon of goat milk! The recipe should be on this site, just look for Parmesan recipes.

Good luck and let me know what you discover about your cheddar.

I’ll be interested to hear how the smaller diameter round comes out compared to the 6” round. I could be that the large, flat round dried out because of its thickness. I doubt the milk made a difference, and humidity should not make that much difference once the cheese is waxed. I don’t think the CaCl or amount of rennet would make a difference either. Perhaps, given its thickness, you pressed it too much and it was pretty dry out of the pressing?

I thingk one of the important question is, How does it taste, Great? Soso? on the final cheeses
What kind of milk/cream content did u use? Sorry if I missed the information.
My guess is their could have been more fat content so it does not dry out.

One thing I find in the short time I have been doing cheeses is that one can waste allot of time on aging when the product ends up uneatable. 4-6 or more months can be a long time to wait to find out its crap. So I i’m going to do short batches to see if they work then redoo them in bigger sizes if they work. O make a large and a small cake and test the small cake as it goes.

Something I found today;

Common Cheese Defects

  * Body. In the context of modern sensory analysis body refers to texture, which is confusing because cheese graders use the term ‘texture’ to refer to cheese openness. Here, we will use the traditional cheese grading terms. Some descriptors for body defects are:
      o Crumbly/short: often due to excess salt or acid
      o Corky: due to overcooking, low fat, low moisture, or excess salt.
      o Mealy: this defect can be detected on the palate or by massaging the cheese between the thumb and forefinger. It is usually associated with excess acidity.
      o Pasty: sticks to the palate and fingers; due to excess moisture.
      o Weak: breaks down too quickly when worked by hand; due excess fat or moisture.

# Texture relates to openness in the cheese which may or may not be desirable depending on the type of cheese and the cause of openness. Openness can be due to:

  * Mechanical openings which are holes of irregular shape caused by trapped whey. Trapped whey makes the impression in the cheese during pressing, but during ripening the moisture is dispersed through out the cheese leaving the hole behind. Openness is desirable in Colby, but is considered a defect in Cheddar. Mechanical openings can lead to discolouration around the opening due to local acid development. Usually mechanical openings are closed by vacuum packaging.
  * Gas holes are, of course, desirable in many types of cheese. Gas hole defects include:
      o Early gas defects due to coliforms. These appear as small, sphericle, shiny holes. The defect is often associated with unclean flavour.
      o Late gas due to Clostridium. tyrobutryricum or perfringens, especially in some European made cheese. Clostridia spores are often present in American cheese as well but do not normally cause problems. However, they may be activated by the heat treatment and, therefore, sometimes cause gas defect in processed cheese.
      o A third gas defect occurs in Cheddar and American types. The defect is distinctive in that the gas (mainly C02 with some hydrogen sulfide) blows the package but not the cheese. The defect occurs at 6 - 9 months in Cheddar but a similar defect is sometimes observed earlier in American Mozzarella and Colby. The causative anaerobic organism is not fully identified, however, experiments have demonstrated that the defect does not occur in cheese aged at < 10C.
      o Yeast slits due to yeast growth.

  *  Flavour. Most grading systems assign the greatest weight to flavour defects. A few common descriptors are:
      o Acid flavour is often associated with acid body defects noted above. The common causes all relate to process control:
          + Too much moisture (i.e., too much lactose).
          + Too much starter (i.e., too much acid development before dipping).
          + Salting too late or too little.
          + Too warm during or immediately after pressing.
      o Bitter flavours are common defects in American but also other cheese, including fresh cheese. Some causes include:
              # High moisture
              # Excess rennet
              # Bitter cultures
              # High ripening temperatures
          + Fruity/Yeasty flavours are usually associated with high pH and bitterness, and sometimes with yeast slits.
          + Unclean flavours are reminiscent of the barn yard, and may be associated with coliforms.
          + Whey taint is due to high moisture and is usually associated with acid defects including bitterness.

I talked to a professor that deals with cheesemaking (came from the stuff i posted) and he said Homo milk is not recomended for cheesemaking except for 1 or 2 particular cheeses. I used Homo in all my stuff and get a bit of a bitter aftertaste. I bought some 2% and a dif name brand and I dont get the bitterness now in my yogurt making so I will be using 2% and a carton of 10% in the next batches of cheese. I guess milk is dif in all parts of the country.