The Little Cheese

Well, two weeks after making the Caerphily cheese, we caved!  The cheese had been maturing nicely in a cool, darkened room, and I was turning it daily.  Then it started to get mouldy on the outside.  No problem, I read, just wipe the mould off with a brine solution and it'll be fine.  But when it was getting mouldy every one or two days, I started to panic that it might actually be coming from the inside of the cheese and not the outside.  We really didn't want our first cheese to go off.  AND, we're going away on Thursday to Edinburgh for Wicked Stepson No. 3's wedding.  I didn't feel happy leaving it unattended while we were away.  I could just imagine us coming back to a blue, hairy inedible blob. So we ate it!  Well, not all of it, just some.

It smelled good, just like cheese in fact.

The texture was good - a little on the dryish side with some tiny bubbles, and there was no sign of any mould on the inside.

The taste was GOOD!!!  It was a slightly dry texture, but that's OK, and the taste was amazing - mild but with a tang, just like you'd expect a good Caerphily to taste.

Mission accomplished.  Now, what are we going to make next?  Maybe another Caerphily to keep us going, and then a Cheddar which has to mature for longer.

The Last Iris

After boring you for the last few weeks with photos of alpacas, peacocks, dead flowers, cheese-making (well, OK, that may have been a bit more interesting) and old men in deck chairs, you're probably wondering when I'm going to get around to showing you something productive.  This is supposed to be a spinning, dyeing and knitting influenced blog after all.  Well, you'll have to wait another day at least I'm afraid.

Here's a little hint though,

a pan of baby alpaca (alpacas again! and no, not from mine) yarn that I've been spinning recently.  This is in a mordant bath (alum) and will stay there cooling until tomorrow when it'll be ready for the dyepot.

This is the last iris.  No, I'm not going to be using just one iris to dye 350 grams of wool - I've got a freezer-ful of the dead ones (oh no, not dead flowers again!).  Each day for the last couple of weeks I've been collecting the flowers as they started to wilt and saving them for dyeing.

So, what colour do you think I'll get from these?  Ha, well I do wonder myself.  We'll all find out tomorrow won't we?

A little eye-candy from Rob and Tammy's horse-chestnut tree, just because I can!

Speaking of Tammy, she's been very busy picking straw and seeds out of some fleece (dare I mention that it's alpaca) so she can felt it into a rug.

Got the patience of a saint that girl :-

This is more of the dreaded alpaca - it's actually all the short bits from shearing, which aren't long enough too to spin.  Nice colours, should make a lovely rug.

The cat found it all too stressful and went to sleep.

One final photo for today :-

. . . OK, I'll get my coat!!

The Big Cheese!

Yes, that's him, Master Cheesemaker('s assistant!) Extraordinaire.

The Kit!

Monday we managed to buy some unpasteurised milk and decided to (finally!  - we've had the cheesemaking kit for over a year) make some cheese.

We gathered all the ingredients, sterilised all the equipment, and off we went.

The milk had to be heated to just over 30 degrees C before adding the cheese starter culture and then the rennet (we used vegetarian, mainly because that's what came with the kit, but also because I don't eat meat).

After the rennet had worked its magic, we had to cut the curds into small squares, not as easy as it sounds because you have to try and cut horizontally as well as vertically. After that it was poured into a cheesecloth-lined sieve and allowed to drain for a while. We kept the whey for making ricotta the next day, and the curds in the cheesecloth were put into the cheese press :-

It was a bit "involved" as we had to keep taking it out of the press, unwrap it, rub the surfaces with salt, re-wrap it and put it back into the press for a bit longer.  Eventually, it went in for the final time and we had to leave it for 16 hours.

Tuesday afternoon we "harvested" our very first cheese, this one's a Caerphily (I think that's the right spelling anyway) which we decided on because it only takes 3 to 4 weeks to mature.

And the finished object :-

So, was it an easy, trouble-free experience?  No and no!  But hopefully the cheese will survive in spite of us and our mistakes (and we did make a few!)  Will we make some more?  Well, the Master Cheesemaker('s Assistant) Extraordinaire has decided it's just a bit too fiddly for him - too many precise temperatures to achieve (he's a bit slap-dash and can't understand why it has to be just so), and a lot of little waiting periods where he doesn't know what to do with himself.  Which is why he's been demoted to Assistant, and I've been upgraded to Master (or Mistress!).

Now, can I get him to actually wait 3 weeks before eating it?

Well, maybe not!