The Aged Cheese Journey …
What do you do when you have a lovely Jersey Milk Cow who gives you 3 gallons of creamy milk every time she is milked? When we were younger and had 4 growing children I was lucky to have extra milk to make ice cream. As the years passed we added Nubian Milk goats to the farm so I could make soft cheeses (which in this house is a staple) like Feta and Paneer. Now that we have we have grandchildren (not yet teenagers) I am finally getting to experiment with making Aged Cheese.
The process is pretty straight forward as long as you are precise in following a recipe. The hardest part for me is having the patience to age the cheese. My favorite beginner cheese making book is “A Cheese Maker’s Journey” by Mary Jane Toth.
The difficult part for me has been accumulating the equipment including a Cheese Press and weights. As you can see in the pictures I am using the grain weights from my antique grain scale. I have since found and ordered a nice 10 lb weight from www. Sausage Maker.com but until it arrives these old iron weights are working just fine.
Any advice from you more experienced cheese makers is much appreciated.
Now the adventure begins as we move up from Cheddar to Stilton….I will keep you advised on the journey.
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