Washed Rind Cheese

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, cheese, cheese making, diy, diyfood, epoisse, food, local, organic, raw milk, salt, sea salt, vegetarian rennet, washed rind

Inspired by my experience washing Bermondsey Spa cheese in Kernel Brewery ale with Mootown Cheese I decided I wanted to try and recreate it’s oozing, meaty goodness at home.

At the heart of any sticky, orange-coloured cheese like Milleens or Stinking Bishop is the bacteria brevibacterium linens.  This naturally occurring bacteria is present on human skin at an incredibly high concentration, and if left unchecked, can start to smell – especially on your feet!

Smelly feet or good cheese?

Just as the blue of Roquefort cheese comes from naturally occurring spores in the Roquefort Caves, washed rind cheeses are also a product of their surroundings.  Historically, sweaty cheesemakers unwittingly transferred their own strain of bacteria to the cheese which, with the right environment, caused a sticky, pungent orange rind to form.  As the cheese matured, the bacteria ate into the cheese paste, causing it to break down into a soft, meaty cheese.

Brevibacterium Linens (apparently)

Nowadays of course, the bacterial strain has been isolated and cheese is innoculated directly during the make, or propagated from an existing cheese through washing.  Even though cheese making is a sanitary process, the “smelly feet” odour remains, which sadly turns a lot of people off washed rinds.  It’s unfortunate because many – such as Stinking Bishop – actually have quite a mild flavour.

24 pints of raw Ayrshire milk

I picked up my usual 24 pints of Redlays Farm unpasteurised Ayrshire milk from Blackheath market on Sunday and got cracking!

Three cheese moulds

Having not had much success with making washed rinds in the past, I asked around a few cheese making friends and forums for any tips.  A fair number of people recommended innoculating with geotrichum candidum to create a “clean layer” for the brevibacterium linens to grow on.  So, after heating the milk to 31C, I added these, plus some DVI starter and left to acidify for 30 minutes.

Adding the animal rennet

Previous experiments into how much rennet to use indicated I should use around 0.06% animal rennet, diluted in four times as much water, to achieve a set in around 60 minutes.

Curd giving a clean break

In reality the curd took around 20 minutes longer than expected to give a clean break – I think this may be down to natural degradation in strength of the rennet, as I’ve had the same bottle on the go for quite a while now.

Cutting the curd

Using a palette knife, I cut the curd into roughly 1cm cubes, starting with large blocks vertically, then smaller and smaller, angling the knife to try and cut through the blocks.  Cutting the curd allows whey to be released from the curd, and slows down the rennet acidification.

Stirring the cut curd while heating

Once the curd has rested for a few minutes to allow it to heal (i.e. recover from the cutting), it’s time to get stirring and heating in order to slow the rennet action even further and release more whey, making a less squidgy curd.  I heated to around 35C over the course of 20 minutes or so.

Getting rid of the whey

Here’s where my lovely vat becomes really useful.  Having the tap at the front allows whey to be drained off much quicker and easier than ladelling out by hand.  Once the whey had been completely drained off, it’s time to carefully squash the curd into the moulds and add some weights on top for around 24 hours.

Curd in salt water

Then it’s time for the salting to start!  In the past, I’ve mostly used dry salting (i.e. applying salt directly to the cheese), however washed rinds are generally initially bathed in salt water to allow the salt to permeate throughout the cheese.  In this case, the cheeses floated around in a 16% brine solution for 12 hours, after which they were given a bit of a drying off, then placed in a fridge at 16C at over 90% humidity.

Unwashed cheeses (note the propagator cheese on the right)

After about a week, a light fluffy covering of geotrichum candidum had appeared, so it was time to start washing, to keep the surface moist and salty to encourage the brevibacterium linens growth.

Washing the parent cheese

First up for a wash was the parent propagator cheese.  This is one from a previous batch of cheese I’d made which had ended up with a great flavour and texture, so I wanted the strain to continue.  Washing consisted of a couple of drops of 10% salt water solution and a bit of gentle smearing.

Damp parent cheese

Washing continued roughly every couple of days.  As my experience with Bermondsey Spa had taught me, if the texture of the surface was any more moist than a postage stamp, I postponed washing till the following day.

Fully ripened homemade washed rind cheese

After about three weeks I cracked them open and had a taste.  They were really, really good!  So good in fact that I actually allowed other people to have a taste, including washed rind cheese king, Bill Oglethorpe of Kappacasein, who said:

Just polished off the cheese, it’s really good! I thought there might be too much salt and a hint of bitter but on second thoughts its fine. The contrast in textures is really nice, oozing on the edges and slightly chalky in the middle. I left it at room temperature for a couple of days and it survived very well.

I’m very happy with this recipe and the feedback.  Next time I might try to go a little lighter on the salt concentration to address Bill’s concerns, but other than that it seems like a winner!

Making cheese at home with the Women’s Institute

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, food, jersey milk, underground farmers market, urban cheese, vegetarian rennet, wi, women's institute

Last Thursday I gave a demonstration to the North London Women’s Institute on how to make cheese at home.  It was arranged by Charlotte Heavisides, who I originally met a couple of years ago at MsMarmiteLover’s first Underground Food & Craft Market.

Making cheese at home with the WI

I thought it might be interesting to see whether it was possible to make cheese in 20 minutes, using equipment found in a regular kitchen, and milk from the supermarket.  This flies in the face of all the experiments I’ve performed, which indicate that time and care is required to make good cheese.  In this case though, as long as the end result is edible, and not too disgusting, I’d class it as a success.

Ready to demonstrate cheese making

Using a standard saucepan, I heated 2.25 litres of Taste the Difference Jersey milk to 30C, which I’d found to be the best supermarket milk to make cheese with during my Milk Type Experiments.

I then coagulated it using 0.40% vegetarian rennet, diluted in double the volume water to give a set in around nine minutes.  The volume of rennet to use was a tough to decide on, since I’ve found in the past that doubling volumes doesn’t halve coagulation time.  I was also concerned that using too much rennet would impair the flavour so much it would be inedible.  In the end I decided that overusing rennet would be preferable, since I only had a limited amount of time available.  Since previous experiments have shown 0.04% rennet gives a coagulation time of 90 minutes, I thought 0.4% would hopefully coagulate in around 9 minutes.

Mid cheese-making

After coagulation, I cut the curd, ladelled it into cheese-cloth, and after a bit of squeezing, flavoured it heavily with sea salt, pepper, oregano and garlic.  The raw cheese tasted quite a lot like rennet, so a fair amount of flavouring was needed to mask it.

Overall the final cheese went down surprisingly well – some people actually had seconds!  I also brought along some of my washed rind cheeses, and the results of the Rennet Type Experiments to show people the difference a small ingredient makes when making cheese.  There were some very interesting questions about the historical aspects of cheese making, as well as some specifics about allergies to cheese, and how best to keep cheese in the fridge.

@heatherrhian also very kindly created a little fact sheet on how to make cheese at home, and where to get the required equipment which you can take a look at here: Cheesemaking for WI.

Rennet Type Experiments – The Results

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, calf rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, diyfood, ewe rennet, food, guernsey milk, jersey milk, kid rennet, lamb rennet, local, natural rennet, organic, raw milk, salt, sea salt, urban cheese, vegetarian rennet

Just over a week after making cheese with different types of rennet, the cheeses were ready for tasting!

Cheeses coagulated using different rennets

From top left to bottom right, left to right: vegetarian, generic, premium, calf, lamb, kid rennet.

VEGETARIAN RENNET

The cheeses were quite different in texture, most noticeably the vegetarian rennet cheese was much softer than the any of the other cheeses.

Vegetarian rennet cheese

Notice that the vegetarian rennet cheese has significant breakdown just beneath the rind, which creates the soft texture to the touch.  The rind actually ended up slipping slightly off the underlying paste.  Taste-wise, it was a bit disappointing, having a slightly metallic, acrid flavour.

GENERIC ANIMAL RENNET

Generic animal rennet cheese

The generic animal rennet cheese had much less breakdown beneath the rind, and a nice soft paste.  The rind texture felt a little thick when biting down on it, and the paste had a good strong earthy flavour to it, without a hint of bite.

PREMIUM ANIMAL RENNET

Premium animal rennet cheese

The premium animal rennet cheese had quite a dense paste, and the rind was surprisingly fluffy.  The paste tasted relatively inoffensive, and may have benefited from a few more days maturing.

CALF RENNET

Calf rennet cheese

The calf rennet cheese had hardly any breakdown below the rind, with a slightly chalky paste.  As a consequence, the rind texture was quite thin, although this resulted in a slight aftertaste after an initially mild flavour.

LAMB RENNET

Lamb rennet cheese

The lamb rennet cheese had broken down substantially just below the rind, with the paste starting to break away.  This resulted in a thicker texture to the rind when biting down on it, although the paste remained quite soft and buttery, with a slightly meaty flavour.

KID RENNET

Kid rennet cheese

The kid rennet cheese had quite a fluffy rind, and the paste had a much stronger flavour than any of the other cheeses.  Overall it was the best combination of rind texture and paste flavour, with only a small amount of breakdown.

IN CONCLUSION

Cheeses coagulated with different rennets

Clockwise from top: vegetarian, generic animal, premium animal, calf, lamb, kid.

In conclusion the results are quite surprising.  I was expecting calf rennet used with cow milk to give the highest yield, and the best flavour and texture.  It was however the kid and lamb rennets which gave both the highest yield and best resulting cheese.  Vegetarian rennet was also surprising in that it gave quite an unpleasant resulting flavour.  I had read that in long-aged cheeses, vegetarian rennet sometimes gives a sharper flavour than animal, but wasn’t expecting it in such a short maturing time.

Thanks again to Jaap from Jongia (and the retail arm The Cheesemaking Shop) for providing the rennet for this experiment.

Rennet Type Experiments – The Cheese

Tags

amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, calf rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, ewe rennet, food, guernsey milk, jersey milk, kid rennet, lamb rennet, local, natural rennet, organic, raw milk, salt, sea salt, urban cheese, vegetarian rennet

In my previous post Rennet Type Experiments – The Background, I detailed six different types of rennet I would use in an experiment to see which rennet produced the best flavoured cheese.

I stuck to my tried-and-tested camembert recipe, but instead of using my usual goat milk, I decided to try out a combination of unpasteurised Ayrshire and Guernsey milk which is available from Blackheath Farmer’s Market on a Sunday from Redlays Farm.

Home cheese making equipment

As with the previous experiments which have required separate vats (for example, when looking at what type of milk to use for cheese), I divided my vat into six separate compartments, which would each be coagulated using a different type of rennet.

Different types of rennet

From left to right: vegetarian rennet, animal rennet, premium animal rennet, calf rennet, lamb rennet, kid rennet.  Note how the rennet pastes are cloudier than their liquid counterparts.

Each rennet had instructions for use on the side of the bottle, which were almost identical.  I thought this was quite odd, as I’ve noticed in the past that vegetarian rennet is required in higher volumes than animal rennet, but I followed the instructions regardless.  One notable difference was that the calf, lamb and kid rennet were all in “paste” form, rather than the yellow liquid I would usually associate with rennet.

Vegetarian rennet set

Each vat was heated to 30C then a small pinch of DVI starter, geotrichum candidum and penicillium candidum was added.  30 minutes later I added 0.04% rennet (0.8ml) diluted in three times the amount of water.  Based on previous experiments into how much rennet to use, this should have given a “clean break” in 90 minutes.  There was a marked difference in set strength after this time, as shown by the vegetarian rennet set above, which was quite weak and soft.

Generic animal rennet set

The generic animal rennet showed a good clean break, splitting easily over my finger.

Premium animal rennet set

Premium animal rennet didn’t give as good a set as the generic animal rennet, with the curd splitting up inconsistently in places.

Calf rennet set

The calf rennet surprisingly didn’t give that strong a set either, with the break not being entirely clean across my finger.

Lamb rennet set

The lamb rennet set was perfect.  Moving my finger through the curd caused a completely clean split through the curd, with almost no residue.

Kid rennet set

Likewise the kid rennet set was just as good, if not better than the lamb rennet.  No residue whatsoever, and a lovely split.

Curd draining

The curd was ladelled out into two sets of numbered moulds and left to drain naturally for a day.

Drained curd

At this stage, the curd was dry salted with 2.6% Cornish Sea Salt, and left to dry for a couple of days before being placed in a cheese cave to mature.

Rennet yield

There was a noticeable difference in yield from each rennet type, with vegetarian and calf producing the lowest yield, and lamb and kid producing the highest.  I would imagine this is a function of the set strength, since a softer curd would naturally lead to higher whey loss during ladelling and draining.

The tasting results of the experiment will be posted shortly!

Rennet Type Experiments – The Background

Tags

amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, calf rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, ewe rennet, food, goats milk, guernsey milk, jersey milk, kid rennet, organic, raw milk, rennet, salt, sea salt, vegetarian rennet

Rennet is one of the most fascinating elements of cheese making.  It is often portrayed as a magical chemical which turns milk from a liquid into a solid, but the reality is it’s actually a very natural process.

When a calf suckles milk from it’s mother, the milk it ingests is solidified by enzymes in it’s 4th stomach, allowing the milk to be retained in the stomach long enough for digestion to occur.

Where rennet comes from

The story goes that rennet was originally discovered by accident, when travelers used stomach linings as canteens to transport milk, and noticed that with sufficient temperature, the milk would turn solid.

Wikipedia describes rennet as follows:

Natural calf rennet is extracted from the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach chamber (the abomasum) of slaughtered young, unweaned calves.

Over the years, this process has been refined to use only the required enzymes in the stomach to coagulate the milk, but the process has remained the same.  Recently, there has been a focus towards vegetarian rennet, either from natural sources (nettles, or any other weak acid), or artificially created in a laboratory.  Even those cheese makers who still use animal rennet have mostly switched to generic animal rennet, rather than using extracts from a specific animal.

THE EXPERIMENT

Following on from my experiments into milk type, salt type and rennet quantity, I thought it would be interesting to perform an experiment to compare different types of rennet.  My aim is to find whether there is a discernible difference in the cheese produced in terms of yield, texture and flavour.

Each rennet was kindly provided by Jaap of Jongia, who also runs the excellent Cheese Making Shop, and has this to say:

Rennet is not a chemical, it is an ingredient

The types of rennet I used were as follows:

1. Vegetarian Rennet (available here)

Vegetarian rennet

This rennet is microbial, although some vegetarian rennets are genetically engineered.  There are some interesting notes on microbial rennet on BioRen’s site,  although they are heavily biased, since they produce animal rennet.

2. Generic Animal Rennet (available here)

Generic animal rennet

Generic animal rennet generally comes calves, although may contain other animal extracts.  It’s termed as “Super Industrial Strength”, although the dosage instructions are similar to the other rennets in the experiment.

3. Premium Animal Rennet

Premium natural animal rennet

Available from BioRen, this rennet is produced exclusively from the stomachs of young calves, and extracted into liquid form.

4. Calf Rennet Paste (liquid form available here)

Calf rennet paste

Another rennet from BioRen, it should naturally be more adept at coagulating cow’s milk, with the description citing “spicier and tastier maturation flavours”.  The paste form makes it slightly more tricky to work with than liquid rennet due to the difficulty of getting it into a syringe.

5. Lamb Rennet Paste (available here)

Lamb rennet paste

From BioRen again, termed “Semi-Piccante” it’s said to give a spicier flavour than normal rennet when used with ewe or even cow cheese.

6. Kid Rennet Paste (available here)

Kid rennet paste

The final rennet from BioRen, said to impart a typical goat cheese flavour to all types of milk.

So that’s the background, now on with the cheese making!