Farmhouse Cheddar

For the last few days it has rained and rained and rained and then rained a bit more. So we mostly stayed inside. Probably you can see from recent posts I spent a lot of the time cooking. One day I made 3 different kinds of cheese. Coulommier - this time using raw milk to see if it made any difference to the flavour. It is too soon to say really, but the curds were rather different in the final cheese has come out a bit more solid, but it is hard to tell whether that was the different milk or a slight difference in temperature or something.
I also made a farmhouse cheddar - this has a bit of a simpler method to real cheddar which involves a lot of a process called cheddaring which involves chopping and stacking and re-stacking the curds many many times while draining the whey out. The final cheese was ricotta as this is made from whey of which I had a lot by now. You are still left with lots of whey but you have extracted more of the goodness. The left bottle is the original from the Coulommier, the other three have been used to make ricotta too.

What do you DO with so much whey?

I am having trouble getting enough weight on to the cheese press, so not quite sure how it will turn out. The leverage is only x2 and the internet say you want something like 10psi, with a diameter of 5inches that means I need to get 80lb on the arm which seems quite unfeasible (full kettle is about 4kg, bag of rocks about 9kg which is what is on there now). In addition there seems to be a slight design flaw in it that the base isn't long enough and doesn't extend as far as under the weight, so for the moment it is clamped to the work top.

The cheese stays in there for 5 days being turned every day.

After a couple of days it is now looking a bit smoother and rounder than this but tastes extremely bland and has a more rubbery texture than I typically like in my cheddar. Hopefully it will be better after the month maturing that is recommended (or more if you can wait longer)

4 liters of milk makes about 1lb (1/2 kg) of cheddar.

Method for Farmhouse Cheddar
4 liters whole milk
6 ice cubes of starter
2ml rennet (diluted in 8ml of water)
9g salt (1 tbl spoon)

Heat the milk to 32°C
Add the starter and stir well
Leave for about 40 mins (I left longer for about an hour) or until the milk smells of butter.
Add the rennet and stir well.
Leave a further 40 mins until curd forms
Cut the curd in to 2cm blocks (approx)
Slowly raise the temperature of the curds to 38°C, stirring gently as you do so
Leave for 10 mins (maintain the temperature) to let the curds settle to the bottom
Squish the curds to the bottom of the pan and to one side and ladle the whey out the pan
You now have a 'mat' of curds. Cut it in to 8 thin pieces and stack them one on top of the other and leave to drain for 10 mins. Ladle out any whey that comes out of them.
Pull apart and re-stack so a different one is on the bottom and they are all upsidedown
Leave a further 10 mins and remove any whey
Continue to restack every 30 mins until the whey stops running and if you squeeze the curd only a few drops of liquid come out. Maybe a couple of hours.
Crumble the curd in to 1cm size pieces
Add the salt and mix in well
Place the curds in a damp cheese cloth in the mold and put it in the cheese press for 4 hours with just enough weight to squeeze out whey.
Remove the cheese from the mold and wrap in a new piece of cheese cloth and put back in the other way up. Put back in the press for 24 hours with a heavier weight (I used 4kg). Repeat 5 times (I increased weight to 9kg at the 2nd rewrapping)

Remove from the press and allow to air dry for a day then coat in oil and store for at least a month. Turn daily and wash off any mould.