Moldy Cheese and Brewing Without Failures

It's been a while since I've updated you all on my DIY food and beverage pursuits. Mostly because I haven't really done much. It's hard to make cheese out of the back of your car in the Everglades. Nonetheless, there is still news!

First, I would like to all inform you of the untimely demise of my colby cheese wheel. Since I wasn't able to coddle it while we were gone for a month to the tropics (i.e., turn the wheel over every couple days to keep airflow over all parts of it), it decided that it wasn't getting enough attention from me and turned to it's second love: mold. However, the best part about hard cheese, is that since it is non-porous (unlike bread), the mold can't actually penetrate the cheese very far. So you can just cut the mold off and eat the rest. I actually managed to salvage about half of the block after some diligent whittling. I then gave it a little brine bath in case any of that mold had an idea to start regrowing. I can report that the cheese actually tastes rather delicious. It has the best texture of any of my cheeses to date as well. 

How long has this been goin' on? 

Ah. Much better. 

In other news, I discovered that I did not, in fact, overcarbonate all of the homebrews I brought out here. Many of you who have come out to visit have no doubt noticed the ridiculous carbonation of my homebrews. Now I just assumed that I had failed to properly calculate my priming sugar, or I hadn't allowed the yeast enough time to fully attenuate, or I had committed some other mistake and that my lack of brewing skills were no doubt at work. Regardless of this, I took a case of my brews with us on our road trip so we could save some money on liquor store purchases. As I discovered, the difference between 9000 feet elevation and 0 feet elevation at the seashore on the carbonation of a beer is pretty monumental. The beers that sometimes nearly exploded and spewed out foam upon opening at 9000'--they poured perfectly at sea level.

Also in brewing news, my Mom (thanks Mom!) sent me some old brewing books in the mail, which she, her sister, and mom had given my Grandpa for Father's Day in 1972. Never fear, this book was written in Britain. (As we all know, homebrewing was still illegal in the US until 1978 (thanks Jimmy!).) I'm hoping that it will live up to it's name, and allow me to brew beer "Without Failures." What I've read of it so far seems pretty advanced for it's day, considering it actually contains recipes with malt and hops--ingredients which were hard to impossible for a non-commercial brewery to get a hold of in 1972. I believe most home "beer" brewers of that day were making the equivalent of prison-brew: lots of sugar, some baker's yeast, and maybe some hops if you could convince some local brewery or farmer to give you some.

However, I don't know that I will necessarily be reproducing any of the recipes. Unless some of the ingredients specified have drastically changed in nature (which is actually pretty likely), then I have a feeling many of these brews might taste downright terrible. But hey, for 1972, they were probably about the best thing going. It just makes me more thankful than ever for Charlie Papazian.

I wonder if WITHOUT FAILURES is a guaranteed or money back kind of a statement. 

Holy Black Patent, Batman! The most black patent malt I have ever put in a recipe was probably about 6 oz. for a 5 gallon batch. Pretty sure 2 lb. would just destroy your mouth with it's bitterness. Super Stout, it is. 

Say Cheese!

I knew that I wouldn't be able to brew beer on our sabbatical due to various logistical issues (mostly just bringing all of my brewing equipment out here). I have like 6 cases of homebrew in the basement right now, so fear not, I am not without my homebrews. But, having beer aside, I knew that I needed some fermentation in my life. I imagine most people who start to make beer, wine, cheese, cured meats, or any other kind of fermentation get infected themselves and can't go long without having something growing in their basement. I knew that I had to do something, and what better than cheese! Nearly as delicious as beer, and pretty good together with it too.

Edam in the front, caerphilly on the right and
Monterrey Jack in the back. 

So, the cheese factory has begun to churn out products in the Aber's laboratory kitchen. Soon, you will all be calling me the Cheese-Whiz, since I'll be like a wizard making cheese. Wait a second...never mind that. In any case, I've got a block of caerphilly, edam, and monterrey jack curing away in my cheese cave right now. The edam and monterrey jack should be done in about a month, and the caerphilly in a week or two from now. We're also mostly through my first batch of cottage cheese, which I might just make another of if we're not too sick of it by the time we finish (you find that a pound of cottage cheese goes a long way...).

Cutting the curds is Serious Business.

I'm pretty surprised by how easy it really is to make cheese. I'm always trying to get people to start brewing beer, but it really can be somewhat of a dauting undertaking. Cheese on the other hand, will probably cost you like $20 in equipment and supplies to make your first curds, and the recipes are straightforward enough that you don't really have to read up much on it at first to start. Most of the stuff I've used here, we already had in the kitchen, or I constructed out of junk. Literally, the stainless steel bottom of my cheese press came out of the trash. (Don't worry though, I did scour the thing like no other and put a new brushed finish on it using sandpaper, steel wool, and rippling biceps.) My cheese mold is a $1 plastic pitcher, that I cut apart and drilled holes in, and the rest of the cheese press came off of various parts of broken furniture among other things that we had in our basement.

This is what I love about cheese--it seems so complex and like something that could only be made in a sterile factory, but in reality its something that's been made in the home for the last 9000 odd years up until like 1950. I suppose this describes most food come to think of it... Also, the best part about making cheese is that  you generally get a pound of cheese out of a gallon of whole milk. So, based on the confusingly low price of $2.75/gal here in Colorado, we're going to be eating cheese for $2.75/lb. I can't imagine finding any cheese at the grocery store for less than about $4/lb. And you get the supreme satisfaction of eating some home made cheese.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go make some colby.

Poor little edam, being crushed by 60 lbs. of weights.

My water bath setup. Helps to heat the milk without scorching it and to hold a
constant temperature over long periods. Its just an electric roaster oven I randomly
found out here. 

Monterrey jack coming out of the press. That is one sweet cheese mold, isn't it?