Make Your Own Cheese!
While many homebrewers offer suggestions about what foods pair nicely with their beers, to me nothing is quite as delightful as cheese. Particularly at informal gatherings, cheese and beer go so well together. Cheesemaking is a lot less complicated and challenging than many might imagine. To follow are details about my own approach to cheesemaking that may motivate you to try your own hand at this form of fermentation.
You can certainly use store-bought milk. The one precaution is to avoid any milk that is ultra-pasteurized. The heat from this kind of pasteurization damages the casein proteins in milk in ways that cheesemakers cannot repair. Regularly pasteurized milk is also damaged, but adding ¼ tsp. of food-grade calcium chloride dissolved in non-chlorinated water for every gallon (3.8 L) of milk enables the milk to form firm curds.
As a homebrewer, you know that 90 percent of the hobby is about cleaning and sanitation. This is true, too, for cheesemaking. I heat all kettles and steel tools (knives, ladles, colanders, slotted spoons) in boiling water, and I boil molds, baskets, and cheese cloths at the same time. I spray the counters in my kitchen with the same sanitizer used for brewing and, as extra insurance, I cover the counter on which I lay my tools with a clean dish towel.
You may already have much of the equipment you need for cheesemaking. I make a batch of cheese using a single gallon (3.8 L) of milk so I don’t need oversized kettles. If you have two large kettles or stock pots, one of which can sit inside the other to act as a double boiler, that is perfect. Recently, I purchased a very basic sous vide device and that, in my opinion, is even better. With a double boiler, you must constantly monitor the temperature of the milk/curds, but a sous vide heats water to the temperature you set and keeps that water in the “bath” in constant motion. If you set it for 90 °F (32 °C) it stays at 90 °F (32 °C) until you change it, giving you much more control over the temperature of the milk or curds than a double boiler with less need for supervision.
Cheese does need to be refrigerated, but a cheese fridge (cheese cave) is warmer than your kitchen fridge. If you age a cheese in your regular fridge, it will take perhaps twice or three times as long as it would in a cheese cave. A cheese cave is very similar to a wine fridge or fermentation box. Typically, I age cheese between 50–55 °F (10–13 °C).
To make a cheese fridge, all you need is a small dorm room refrigerator to which you attach a plug-and-play thermostat. When the fridge falls below the set temperature, the thermostat will shut off the power to the fridge, and when the temperature rises a degree or two above the set temperature, the thermostat will switch the power back on. There is no need to modify the fridge in any way. What you don’t want or need is a freezer compartment, as that takes up space you cannot efficiently use for aging cheese.
Other tools and equipment you will need include:
Measuring cups and spoons: Most additives are added in ¼ cup of distilled water.
Thermometer: I use a thermometer with a lower and upper-level alarm.
Basin: This is the water bath for the sous vide. It needs to be able to comfortably hold the kettle with the gallon (3.8 L) of milk and be able to contain enough water to be at the height of the milk in the kettle.
Kitchen scale: This is used for measuring salt for brine and to determine the weight of the cheese; often the amount of time a cheese should be submerged in brine is based on its weight.
Kitchen whisk: This helps incorporate yogurt into the milk in these recipes, but a whisk is sometimes used in place of a curd knife to cut the curds.
Cheesecloth: You could use a clean dish towel, but butter muslin or the material used for flour sacks is better. Supermarket “cheesecloth” is not suitable.
Long knife for cutting curds: The knife needs to be able to cut the curds through to the bottom of the kettle.
Slotted spoon: For stirring.
“Basket” or mold: This enables you to shape the cheese and press the curds to expel the whey.
Cheese press: These can be very expensive, but even if you are not very handy you can easily make a press for a few dollars. You will need two wooden cutting boards about 11 x 14 inches (28 x 36 cm), four 12-inch (30-cm) threaded rods, eight washers, and eight nuts. Clamp the two boards together and drill them about 1 inch (2.5 cm) from each corner. Fasten the rods to the bottom board with a nut and washer beneath and above the board, and slide the top board over the rods. Best if you can widen the top holes a little to enable you to slide down the top board easily. The two boards with these rods allow you to add any necessary weights to the top board. Remember that 1 gallon (3.8 L) of water weighs about 8 lbs. (3.6 kg), and you can use bricks, pavers, or exercise weights.
Cheese cultures: These, too, can be expensive (you can find them in some homebrew supply stores or various outlets online), but you can make most kinds of cheese with two relatively inexpensive and easily available cultures. One is plain yogurt with live cultures and the other is buttermilk with live cultures. The first is perfect for what are called thermophilic cheeses, such as Emmental, Parmesan, Jarlsberg, and the like, while buttermilk culture is suitable for mesophilic cheeses, such as Cheddar or Caerphilly. A few cheeses use both mesophilic and thermophilic cultures.
Brine: Different cheeses are salted in different ways, but many cheeses are brined. One common brine is about 18% salt. To make this brine, take 1 liter (1 quart) of non-chlorinated water, 180 g non-iodized salt, 1 Tbsp. of calcium chloride, and 1 tsp. of white vinegar. Boil the water and dissolve the additives. This brine can be re-used but needs to be refrigerated. For any subsequent batch of cheese you need to check to make certain that the salt content is still around 18%. Calcium chloride is included to ensure that the brine does not pull any calcium from the cheese and the vinegar is there to increase the acidity of the brine, again inhibiting the brine from reducing the acidity of the cheese as the system will tend to want to balance any significant chemical differences between the brine and the cheese.
To follow are three recipes for different styles of cheese that will provide further details on the basics just covered and result in three delicious pairings for your homebrews.
Cheese Curds
This is a hard cheese that needs no aging. It uses mesophilic culture.
Ingredients
1 gallon (3.8 L) whole milk
¼ cup buttermilk
¼ tsp. calcium chloride
½ tablet rennet (available from cheesemaking retailers online)
Distilled water
1 Tbsp. non-iodized salt
Step by Step
Sanitize all tools and equipment by boiling them in the upper kettle of your double boiler. Remove all tools and carefully pour the boiling water into the lower kettle. Place the upper kettle inside (or atop) the lower kettle and gently pour the milk into the sanitized upper kettle. Use the boiling water in the lower kettle of the double boiler to heat the milk to the
desired temperature.
If you are using a sous vide precision cooker, use the sanitized kettle in the sous vide water bath to heat the milk to the desired temperature.
Slowly heat milk to 90 °F (32 °C). If you are using a sous vide to heat the water bath, you may need to raise the temperature of the water a degree or two above the target temperature to heat the milk through the kettle. Always measure and monitor the temperature of the milk or curds.
Add ¼ cup of buttermilk mixed in a cup of the milk and stir in an up-and-down motion for one or two minutes to incorporate the cultures into the milk. Allow the milk to ripen (acidify) for 45 minutes.
Dissolve the calcium chloride in ¼ cup of distilled water and stir into the milk in an up-and-down motion to fully incorporate this into the milk. Crush the half tablet of rennet, and dissolve in ¼ cup of distilled water. Stir the rennet into the milk, again in an up-and-down manner but for no more than 1 minute, as the rennet begins to work very quickly and stirring will prevent the milk from co-agulating properly.
Allow the rennet to coagulate the milk for 45 minutes then check for what is called a “clean break.” A clean break happens when you insert a knife into what looks like the solid mass of milk that is beginning to move away from the sides of the pot. Turn the knife at right angles; if the space created by this cut holds its shape and does not fill up with milk, it’s a clean break. If the space begins to fill, wait another 10 minutes and check again.
Cut the curds horizontally (as best you can) into ½-inch (1.3-cm) slices, then cut vertically so that the entire mass is now in ½-inch (1.3-cm) cubes. Allow the curds to heal for five minutes. The act of cutting the curds leaves them with “raw” surfaces. Letting the curds stand untouched for those minutes enables the proteins to bond together and to expel the whey in a more controlled manner.
Over the next 30 minutes, raise the temperature from 90 °F (32 °C) to 102 °F (39 °C) as you gently stir the curds (you will be raising the temperature of the curds 1 °F in just over every two minutes, or 1 °C per four minutes). The increase in temperature and the stirring helps release more of the whey and the curds will noticeably shrink in size.
Continue to cook the curds at 102 °F (39 °C) for another 30 minutes.
At the end of the cooking time, gently transfer the curds into a cloth-lined colander and allow them to drain for 15–20 minutes. This can be done by gathering up the corners of the cloth and loosely tying them together using the fourth corner to tighten the bag that you have formed. Better draining can be achieved by tying the bag to a hook or handle so that the bag is suspended. The liquid being drained is called whey, and can be used for numerous things, including making whey wine (see the “Last Call” column on page 58 to learn more about this process).
After they have drained, break up the mass of curds into walnut-sized pieces and mix in a scant tablespoon of salt so that the salt is thoroughly mixed throughout. This salt will add flavor to the curds, further expel whey, and act as a preservative.
Place the bag in your cheese press between the two boards, fill the gallon (3.8 L) milk container with water and place it atop the press, allowing the cheese to sit for three hours under this weight. After each hour, remove the cloth from around the cheese, gently turn the cheese so that the top is now the bottom, then rewrap the cloth around the cheese and continue to press the cheese under the weight of the water.
After three hours, remove the cheese that should have formed a single block and cut it into 1-inch (2.5-cm) cubes.
If you weigh the cheese, you should find that you have made about 1–1.25 lbs. (0.45–0.57 kg) of cheese from a gallon (3.8 L) of milk and you will have produced about 7 pints of whey.
Refrigerate the curds and you can enjoy this cheese the next day.
Asiago Cheese
This Italian cheese benefits from being aged about four weeks for a milder cheese and several months for a stronger flavored and more firm cheese. Again, my recipes all use a single gallon of milk, so the amount of cheese I make from each batch is about one pound (0.45 kg).
Ingredients
1 gallon (3.8 L) whole milk
¼ cup thermophilic culture (yogurt)
¼ tsp. calcium chloride
½ rennet tablet
18% brine solution
Step by Step
For this cheese you will need a mold to shape and hold the cheese. You can buy a mold online, but basically, what you need is a container with small holes on the sides and bottom to allow whey to exit from the cheese. You could make a reasonable mold from two large yogurt containers. Cover the first with small holes you pierced with an awl. The second container will act as a follower upon which you press to exert pressure on the cheese in the mold. I use an unopened can of vegetables that I place inside the follower so that any pressure acts on the can rather than the plastic container.
Sanitize all tools and equipment. Heat the milk in the double boiler or sous vide water bath to 92 °F (33 °C).
Whisk ¼ cup of live yogurt culture into a cup of this heated milk, and with an up-and-down motion, stir the culture into the cup so that it is thoroughly mixed.
Pour this cup of milk and yogurt into the gallon (3.8 L) of milk and stir in an up-and-down motion for one to two minutes to thoroughly incorporate the yogurt culture into the milk. Allow the cultures to acidify the milk for 45 minutes.
Dissolve ¼ tsp. of calcium chloride in ¼ cup of distilled water and using this same up-and-down motion, stir the calcium chloride into the milk.
Dissolve the ½ tablet of rennet in ¼ cup of distilled water and thoroughly mix the rennet into the milk, taking no more than a minute to stir the milk. Allow the rennet to set for 45 minutes and check for a clean break. If the break seems very loose, wait ten minutes and check again.
As with the previous recipe, cut the curds horizontally and vertically into ½-inch (1.3-cm) cubes. Allow the curds to heal for five minutes.
Stir gently and almost continuously over the next 20 minutes as you raise the temperature to 104 °F (40 °C). It is always important that any increase in temperature is done slowly. If you raise the temperature too quickly, the outside of the curds become more firm than the insides, which will tend to seal the curds and prevent any further expulsion of whey.
At 104 °F (40 °C), stir every 4–5 minutes for the next 20 minutes to ensure that the curds do not mat together. While doing this, increase the temperature from 104 °F (40 °C) to 118 °F (48 °C).
Carefully remove the whey above the curds and then gently pour the curds into a cloth-lined colander. Allow to drain for about 15 minutes.
Gently fill the mold with the curds wrapped in the cloth, making certain that the cloth containing the cheese has as few wrinkles as possible. Cover the top of the mold with some of the cheesecloth before you place the follower over the cloth.
Place the cheese-filled mold in the press, and place 12 lbs. (5.4 kg) of weight to the top board and press for an hour. After an hour, remove the cheese, undress it and upturn it, so the bottom is now the top. Re-dress the cheese with the cloth and press again for an hour, this time using 24 lbs. (10.9 kg).
Remove the cheese, again undress it and turn the cheese upside down (this action ensures that the cheese is pressed equally on all sides). Return the dressed cheese to the mold before adding 48 lbs. (21.8 kg) of weight for 12 hours (or overnight).
Remove the cheese from the press, remove the cheesecloth, and place it in the 18% brine solution for 8 hours, turning after 4 hours. If the top of the cheese is not below the surface of the brine, sprinkle enough non-iodized salt on the top surface of the cheese to ensure that it is covered in salt the entire time.
After 8 hours of brining, remove the cheese and allow it to air dry at room temperature for 2–3 days until it feels as if it is almost dry. A good technique is to place the cheese on a sushi or bamboo mat seated on a baking rack.
Turn the cheese two or three times a day to allow every surface to be exposed to the air. This cheese should be aged for three or four weeks in a cheese fridge. For humidity, you can simply seal the cheese in an airtight container, which you turn upside down daily to ensure that any whey that is expelled is being expelled from both the top and bottom and not just from the bottom.
When aging a cheese, we need to watch that no unwanted molds grow on the rind, so when you turn this cheese check to see that the rind is mold-free. If you see mold, simply soak a paper towel in white vinegar or the brine solution and wipe the rind to remove the mold. Note, any wrinkles in the cloth while pressing will have created indentations in the rind, and those indentations will harbor mold, so the smoother the surface of the cheese, the less the likelihood of mold growth.
One effective way to inhibit mold growth is to wax the cheese after it has air dried. Before waxing, be sure that the cheese is mold-free, so best practice is to wash every surface with vinegar or brine.
Cheese wax is usually beeswax and not paraffin wax, so it is not inexpensive, but the wax can be reused numerous times. When melting wax, it is always advisable to use a double boiler to prevent overheating the wax, which is flammable. You can apply the melted wax using a brush or by simply dipping the cheese into the wax and allowing the wax to harden before turning the cheese and re-dipping.
Most cheesemakers tend to apply three layers of wax to be certain that the entire wheel of cheese is completely covered with wax. As with everything in life, there is no free lunch, and the downside of waxing a cheese is that the cheese will not form a natural rind. That is a cost I will happily bear to avoid the presence of molds on a rind that may mean a cheese I had been aging for months might be more fit for the compost pile rather than the table.
Caerphilly
This is a kind of Cheddar popularized by Welsh coal miners in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cheddaring refers to the use of the curds themselves as the weight used to expel whey. In true cheddaring, the slabs of curd are kept warm. The weight and heat of the slabs of curds force the whey to be expelled.
Ingredients
1 gallon (3.8 L) whole milk
¼ tsp. calcium chloride
¼ cup buttermilk
½ tablet rennet
3 Tbsp. salt
Step by Step
Heat the milk to 90 °F (32 °C) and thoroughly mix in buttermilk using an up-and-down motion to ensure the culture is fully inoculating the milk. Allow the milk to acidify for 30 minutes.
Dissolve ¼ tsp. calcium chloride in ¼ cup distilled water and mix thoroughly into the milk for a minute or two. Dissolve ½ tablet of rennet in ¼ cup distilled water and mix thoroughly into the milk stirring for no more than 1 minute. Allow rennet to set for 40 minutes.
Check for a clean break. If the curds seem too soft, wait another 10 minutes and check again. When there is a clean break, cut curds both horizontally and vertically into ½-inch (1.3-cm) cubes. Allow these cubes to heal for
10 minutes.
Increase the temperature very slowly over 40 minutes to 95 °F (35 °C) — 1 °F every eight minutes/1 °C every 14 minutes), while stirring continuously. Allow the curds to settle for five minutes.
Carefully and gently pour curds and whey into a cloth-lined colander. Allow the curds to drain for 5 minutes into a kettle kept at 95 °F (35 °C). The curds will form a slab.
Cut this slab into two pieces and place one piece atop the other in the cloth-lined colander. Place a clean towel over the colander to help preserve the heat and allow the slabs to cheddar for 30 minutes, restacking and replacing the top slab with the bottom one every 10 minutes.
Break up the curds into thumbnail-sized pieces (this is called milling the cheese) and mix in 1 Tbsp. of non-iodized salt.
Line a cheese mold with cheesecloth and fill mold with the milled curds. Press for 10 minutes under 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) of weight.
Undress the cheese and gently rub non-iodized salt on the top, bottom, and around the sides. This may take 1 Tbsp. or more of salt.
Turn the cheese upside down on the cloth and reinsert it in the mold, applying the same 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) of weight for another 10 minutes.
Undress cheese and resalt a second time. Upturn the cheese on the cloth, replace it in the mold and press it for 20 minutes under 22 lbs. (10 kg) of weight.
Undress, salt a third time, upturn, redress, and press beneath 22 lbs. (10 kg) overnight.
In the morning, remove the cheese from the press and immerse in 18% brine solution for an hour, turning after 30 minutes. If the cheese floats so high in the brine that the top is not submerged, gently cover the top with a thin layer of non-iodized salt.
Remove the cheese from the brine and allow to air dry for two or three days on a bamboo mat placed on top of a baking rack, turning the cheese two or three times a day to ensure every surface is exposed to the air
Place in a cheese cave (55 °F/13 °C) at about 85 percent relative humidity for three weeks, upturning the cheese once a day. Humidity controllers are more complex, but as I suggested earlier, you can seal the cheese in a plastic or glass food-safe unit and because of the whey the cheese is expelling, the cheese will create a suitably humid environment.
Alternatively, you can wax the cheese, removing the need to monitor humidity as the cheese is for all intents and purposes sealed in an anaerobic environment.
Caerphilly can be enjoyed after 3–4 weeks of aging, or longer if you prefer a stronger tasting cheese.
