Cheesemaking: Gouda

I started my Christmas vacation this week so immediately there was an outage at a customer that needed dealing with.  In the course of spending 4 days on that I managed to find a bit of time to make some gouda.  I am a little behind in my posts as I have made a couple swiss cheeses and have not written about it.  Hopefully I will have the time to write about the swiss next week but this is fresher in my mind so here we go.

Ingredients

10 litres 2% milk

1/2 tsp calcium chloride

1/2 tsp rennet

1/4 tsp (1 packet) mesophilic culture

distilled water

Brine

1 gallon (4 litres) distilled water

2 lbs pickling salt

1tbsp calcium chloride

 Mix the calcium chloride in 1/4 cup of water and add to the milk.

Heat the milk to 86F.  The right hand thermometer is the milk temperature and the left hand is the water bath temperature.

Once at 86F sprinkle the mesophilic powder onto the milk and let rehydrate for 5 minutes.

Gently stir the culture into the milk for 1 minute, cover and let ripen for 40 minutes while maintaining the 86F temperature.

Add the rennet (mixed in 1/4 cup water) and stir in for 1 minute.

Cover and let set for 45 minutes.  

Cut the curd into 1/2 inch cubes and then let stand for 5 minutes to heal.

Gently stir for 5 minutes then allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Remove 4 cups of whey.  I use a coffee filter and ladle it out into a measuring cup.

This is the part where I realize that I did not mention to preheat some water to 140F so I hope everyone has read this to the bottom before proceeding or you will be scrambling.  I use about 8 cups in this process.

Add enough 140F water to bring the temperature to 92F.  Start with 2 cups.  I used 3 in total.

Stir gently for 10 minutes then allow to settle for a few minutes.

Remove whey down to the level of the curds. This was 12 cups for me.  

Add 140F water until the curd/whey mixture is at 98F.  In this case 5 cups was required.

Maintain 98F and gently stir for 20 minutes.

Allow to settle for 10 minutes. The curd will mat at the bottom of the whey.

Pour the mixture into a lined colander and allow to drain for 5 minutes.  Save the whey, you will be using it when you press the curd.

Break the matted curd into 1 inch chunks and place into the mold lined with cheesecloth.  I used an 8 inch mold.  Then put the mold into the reserved whey and press with 10 pounds.  A litre of water is close enough.  Press for 30 minutes.

Unwrap, flip and rewrap the cheese and press at 30 pounds for 30 minutes.  

Finally unwrap, flip and rewrap the cheese and press at 40 pounds for 8 hours.

See cheesepress for a summary of the press. Once I make the next one I will post better details.

Float the cheese in a saturated brine flipping occasionally for 12 hours (overnight)  

To make the brine use 2 lbs pickling or cheese salt to 1 gallon of water.  Add a tbsp of calcium chloride to fresh brine so the calcium will not get pulled out of the cheese. 

Cheese looks good at 2 1/4 pounds.  I will let it air for several days to form a rind, wax and then store in the cheese fridge for 1 to 6 months.