I cracked my Farm Cheddar after 4 weeks. It is good but not quite sharp enough yet. The outside where it had contact with the wax was a bit dry but the interior was nice and creamy. Rewaxed and back in the cave for another 4 weeks. All my cheese seem to be coming along right as they should, except of course I seem to have contaminated my swiis my having in the same cave as my danish blue. Oh well I’ll deal with it. I now have my danish wrapped in foil so I don’t have the same problem in the future. I plan on making a gargonzola Dolce in the next couple of days and don’t want that crossed with my danish…....Happy Cheesing everyone…..............

very nice looking. Cheddar does take awhile. Mine is 1.5 years and itching to crack it.

Wow 1 1/2 years. Don’t think I have the patience for that . I guess if I have enough short term cheeses going I could just forget about it and let it go. Gonna have to get me a bigger cave I think. And a better way of seperating bloomed cheeses. Maybe plastic boxes or something like that.

Thats what happens in my cave (fridge) I have a dozen wheels and I forget about a few of them LOL.

Is your 1-1/2 year old cheddar a farm house, or a stirred curd or a traditional? What difference does those different recipes make in the taste of the cheese? I have made all of them, and I know that traditional says it has to age longer, but is traditional really taste better than stirred curd?

I have not made all the types, just traditional. All I know they need to be aged to develop their proper taste and is well worth the wait. I thingk also they have to be at least 6 months old to be able to compare flavors properly.

I like to make stirred curd cheddar more than I like to make traditional. That is probably because I have not pressed a traditional one right yet. I know what I did wrong, but I have not tried it since I figured that out. The ones in the cave look like lego blocks, but I figured that they would still taste good so I’m not chunking them. I have a 4lb stirred curd in there too, just waiting. I hope that the stirred curd is not over salted like the 2lb one that I had. I did not record how much salt I put in it on my cheese log, but I’m thinking that I doubled the recipe so I should have doubled the salt. Maybe I screwed up and didn’t.

I find the cheese log to be very helpful. The idea is to put the recipe on there, and at the bottom I make notes like “in #8 it said to raise temp to 102 degrees over 45 minutes and it took me 35 minutes. I had the stove set on 3-1/2 so next time try 2-1/2”. I also write when it’s supposed to be ready, and if I take it out and try it I write that down too. It helps a lot. If I want to make the same kind of cheese again I look back at my notes so I don’t make the same mistakes twice. Maybe.

Start a cheese log website LOL
Traditional cheddar is allot of work and the others are probably easier to do.

I thought about a cheese log website but decided that I wanted it for my record, not the rest of the world. So I am doing it in Word. I call it My Adventures in Cheese Making.