Hi, I’m new to cheesemaking and thought I’d like to say Hello to everyone on the forum.

I live in Japan where cheesemaking supplies are very hard to come by, though I did manage to find vegetable rennet on Amazon Japan. For the other stuff, so far I’ve been improvising, using homemade plain yoghurt in place of culture, acidifying with citric acid, etc.

To date I’ve made generic soft/cream cheeses, ricotta and quick mozzarella, but what I really want is to make the lovely hard British cheeses of my childhood – Lancashire, Double Gloucester, Red Leicester, Wensleydale, Caerphilly, etc.

For my first hard cheese I used the recipe for basic cheese from one gallon which I found here - http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm. I followed the instructions more or less exactly, up to wrapping the pressed cheese in a handkerchief and putting it in the fridge. After a couple of weeks the cheese had sort of a yellow rind around the edges, but the sides were still quite soft and had developed mouldy spots. I rubbed the spots with vinegar and salt, which removed them, but next day the cheese was wet. I wiped it off and took it out of the fridge to air-dry. In a couple of days it had developed the cracks you see in the photo, and I hastily returned it to its closed container in the fridge with a bowl of water to provide humidity.
Yesterday the cheese was one month old, so I cut it and tasted. It’s a bit rubbery (not pressed hard enough?) and a bit saltier than I would like, but it’s definitely cheese! Yay!

My second attempt was a Cheshire-style cheese, adapted from this recipe - http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,8296.0/wap2.html - scaled down to 4 litres. I realised later that a smaller cheese needs pressing with less weight; I used 25kilos, and now have a very – very – solid little cheese sitting in the fridge. It looks yellowier than the first one, and smells deliciously buttery.
The Cheshire is supposed to be bandaged. Is it possible to use eg olive oil for this? I’ve only seen lard suggested, and as a vegetarian that isn’t an option.

I’m considering buying a vacuum packer and a wine cellar for aging future cheeses. If anyone has any advice on either of these appliances – what to look out for, what to avoid - I would really appreciate it.

Last question (for the time being!) Lots of recipes call for the milk to be maintained at a temperature of 30-32 ℃; does this mean I cannot/should not try making cheese in a Japanese summer, when temperatures can be in the high 30s? I imagine air drying at those temperatures would also be a problem?

Welcome !!
Looks like you have had some great fun already.

Olive oil is a good way to preserve the outside with salt, thats what I do. Vacuum packing is in 2 camps, like those that prefer corked wine to screw caps, the way I see it cheese needs to breath and vacuuming it does not allow that, other say it makes no difference, its up to you what you would prefer.

As to temperature settings, we do the best to what we have to work with. Experience is the best teacher so try a gallon batch and see how it turns out. Their is a huge difference in flavor when a cheese is less then 90 days, i wouldn’t judge a month old cheese as to how it will end up. Were you live will have a large effect on cheese making like humidity so its just a matter of understanding, trial and error and learning about the environment effects. Cracking is usually from drastic environmental change.

Thank you for the welcome, and your advice.

When you say to use olive oil with salt, do you mean rub the cheese with salt, then apply bandages dipped in oil? Does it get very mouldy on the outside? (My husband thinks I’m a bit crazy spending time making cheese when he thinks there is ‘perfectly good’ cheese in the shops, and he’d probably flip if he started finding little mouldy packages all over the house - or gathered together in a brand new wine cellar.)

When I get round to it I’ll be ordering cultures from the UK, but the cost of shipping 1-2 kilos wax is a bit steep, so waxing isn’t really an option at the moment; which is a pity as I think the waxed cheeses look really neat. Maybe at some point I will be able to persuade a friend or relative to pop a block of wax into their luggage when they visit Japan.

I rewrapped half of the first cheese, so it would be a good idea to leave it for another couple of months?

Another newbie question, this one about cultures: I see that some cultures can just be sprinkled directly over the milk, and others need to be cultured and can then be frozen for future use. The sprinkly ones look a lot easier, but the miser in me likes the idea of being able to indefinitely propagate my own. I’ve been making my own yoghurt for years, so I know all about the need to keep things sanitary. Then again, most recipes seem to specify one type or the other; is it possible to substitute, or do I need both kinds, as well as mesophilic and thermophilic?

I dont wrap the cheese, i would just rub it down with sea salt (table salt fine), rubbing oil on the surface just adds some protection from drying out. (Just dont use oils that go rancid, olive oil was popular in Roman times to keep wine from going bad and they would pour it on top since it floats.
Try finding bees wax and using that. I would leave cheese for at least 3 months, it makes a big difference.
I make my own Kieffer and yogurt as well, some people make a starter, let it percolate then pour it into ice cube trays and freeze them then bag them.
Mixing cultures will give you diff results however no reason to experiment i have. My Fav is mixing blue with Brie culture, makes a smooth blue flavor.

Have fun

Thought I’d chip in a bit here as well.  A tip on the salt - if you use table salt, be sure it is not iodized.  Canning salt is great.  I was thinking the cracking might also be due to the surface of the cheese getting too dry, although from the pics it seems as though the beginning of the crack was there right out of the press - or am I imagining that?

Yes, if you bandage a cheese, the wrap is going to get moldy.  If there is a good coat of lard, or vegetable shortening under it, however, it should not affect your cheese.

As to the “breathing” of cheese, I’m not convinced there is much, if any, air exchange through a coating of wax.  Also, there is the hindrance of not being able to see the cheese surface while it is aging.  Back when I waxed, I had mold development under the wax and it went unnoticed for quite a while.  This DID affect the flavor of the cheese.  So, yes, I’m now a committed vacuum sealer.

I have to agree with Neil on the suggestion to experiment.  Once you “get the hang” of making cheese, it’s great to vary things and see what develops.  And you can tell your husband that the commercial cheese may be “perfectly good,” but you miss out on all the fun of making it.

Thanks for the tips on salt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen iodised salt here- there’s plenty of good quality sea salt, which is what I use in cooking anyway, as well as preserving salt (that would be the same as canning salt?). So I would rub the cheese with salt, then put the oil over the top of that? No need to wipe the excess salt off?

Sorry if I’m being thick here, but is there a difference to the cheese between just rubbing oil on it, and bandaging it with oil? What difference does the cloth make?

I don’t think the cheese was cracked coming out of the press, at least not that I noticed. The cracks appeared when I took it out of the fridge for a second air-dry after I found it weeping. I think it must have been the dry air. The inside of the cheese is quite moist.

Next step is to get a bigger pot so that I can process more than 4 litres at a time!

Cloth makes things stick together more, but also makes things a bit messy, its personal preference.
Only thick people dont ask questions