The first thing about aged cheeses is that you have to have a way to age them. I got a small refrigerator, I was lucky to find one that has no freezer, I don’t know how hard that might be to do now. Then I put an external thermostat on it to control the temperature. (Cheesemaking supply places have these.) The temp in a cheese cave needs to be higher than any refrigerator will stay. But it needs to be relatively constant. I think a freezer might be a better choice for this, because it doesn’t have two temperatures to maintain.

Another thing to think about is that if (when) mold from mold ripened cheeses gets loose in your cave, you will have a time getting rid of it. If you can ever get rid of it. I have a story about that for later. You might want to put off mold ripened cheese for this reason.

I have not made what I would consider a successful camembert. I love the commercial camembert I have eaten, and brie as well. Camembert is quite a bit easier to make, at least with the recipes I had at the time, (Home Cheesemaking, by Ricki Carroll) So I made camembert. I made it from pasteurized milk and also from raw milk.

I followed the recipe as carefully as I possibly could. Because I live in the desert, aging cheeses at the humidity levels required is very difficult. The humidity here is sometimes in single digits, and usually around 20%, you can get the humidity inside a little refrigerator up to about 45% with a pan of water. It needs to be over 90% for the mold growth you need for these cheeses. So they have to go inside a container inside the “cave”, and then you just hope for the best.

The camembert turned out looking like camembert, and it got “oozy” in the center, too runny at least once. I think that was from not getting enough whey out of it. It was more crinkly in the rind than commercial camembert, and had a much stronger flavor. It was a little too strong for me. My mother liked it a lot, I think her taste buds are going and it takes stronger flavors for her to really be able to taste things. It’s possible we should have cut it sooner.

I looked for a picture to link to, I haven’t got one, and I couldn’t find one, although I know I have seen them on the web.

I read the book “American Farmstead Cheese”, by Paul Kindstedt, about the processes involved in making cheeses. It has no recipes. It is an amazing book for understanding what happens to turn milk into cheese. I can’t claim to have understood it, but even so it was very helpful. It is very technical in parts. It also has some discussion about commercial cheesemaking. I’m going to read it again, after I get through “The Ruminant Animal”, which I got recently but have not opened yet. That looks really tough to me also.

Anyway, the Kindstedt book has discussion about raw milk cheese and bacteria, and provides some data. All raw milk cheeses that can be legally sold in the US must be aged at least 60 days. The bacterial levels after 60 days are much lower, for a variety of reasons. Camembert is ready sooner than that, and can’t be aged that long. So I got a little leery of it. But I’ll try again one of these days. We ate it and mother kept it for so long I had to take it away from her and throw it out, and no one got sick.

Kinstedt presents a lot of data about food borne illness from cheese, and it is very rare. Plus in almost all cases it was from cheese made from pasteurized milk in enormous quantities and was traced to contamination after pasteurizing. But next after that is the soft mold ripened cheeses like camembert and brie. Overall it seems to always come back to milk handling.

So I kind of recommend skipping to cheese like cheddar once you want to go beyond chevre, mozzarella, and ricotta. I will definitely try the soft mold ripened cheeses again, just not quite yet.

Next is cheddar.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Two or three years ago I started making cheese. I started out with chevre, of course, and it has been a big success with people.

You need a good thermometer, that’s accurate and easy to use. I started out with a Polder probe thermometer. These have a digital read out and a cable, and a probe. They’re made for meat in the oven, but work really well for cheesemaking. The weak point of these is the probe, they quit after awhile, sometimes fast. I’ve tried three kinds now, and I wrap the connection of the cable and probe with that white stretchy plumbers tape. I think this helps the probe last longer, but they still are the weak point. (If you’re going to use the probe in a roast, be sure to take that tape off first). You also need a way to hang the cheese, I have a chain hanging from my ceiling over the sink.

I think most of the other equipment you need to make chevre can be found in most kitchens. Or you can substitute something.

You need a good 8 quart pot, stainless steel or enameled. Aluminum will not work.

Making chevre is really easy. You heat the milk up to 86 degrees, I do this on the stove, stirring constantly. Add the starter and a bit of rennet, stir it in. Let it sit overnight in the covered pot, and in the morning you have a curd. It needs to be over 70 degrees F, in the winter I put it in my oven with the oven light on. That’s all it needs to be warm enough.

You scoop off thin pieces of the curd with a slotted spoon, into a cheesecloth lined colander, and then hang the cheesecloth over the sink. Or you can put it in molds to drain. Let it drain 6-10 hours and you have chevre.

You need to make sure all the equipment that will touch the milk/cheese is sterilized. I boil water in a big pot and put everything in it. I also boil water in the pot I am going to warm the milk in, since I am not pasteurizing it. If you want to get a permit to sell chevre it has to be made from pasteurized milk, no matter where you are in the US, it’s a federal requirement. If you don’t usually pasteurize the milk you use at home and want the cheese for home use, I have had no issues with making it from raw milk. It keeps about a month, which is quite a bit longer than people say it will. My milk keeps at least two weeks, I never keep it longer than that, so I don’t know how long it actually keeps. I don’t intend to ever sell cheese, or milk either, so I don’t generally pasteurize any milk.

How long it keeps and to some degree how it tastes depends on how the milk is handled. Other things can affect the flavor, such as the individual goat, and perhaps also the breed of goat, and maybe the diet of the goat. If the milk tastes different the cheese will too. I have not noticed any difference in flavor or texture between pasteurized and raw milk. Lots of people, especially Americans, are terrified of “goatiness”. My chevre is not goaty at all. In France “goatiness” is desired. I think you have to cultivate a taste for it if it isn’t common in your culture. But “goatiness” is a feature, not a defect.

You can flavor it any way you want, I like to add red chili powder, granulated garlic, and a bit of cumin and salt, in between layers. Fresh basil leaves are good too, but fresh herbs limit the amount of time the cheese will keep to less than a week.

Chevre is very easy to make and hard to mess up. If you are just starting I recommend getting the chevre starter packets from New England Cheesemaking supply http://www.cheesemaking.com/. They contain a mesophilic starter and the right amount of rennet for a gallon of milk. After you have it down you can move on from there. I hear you can use buttermilk for a starter, but if you do you need to add rennet. The “rennet” in the grocery store isn’t the right stuff.

Next I will talk about my Camembert adventure.

Have a wonderful day!