New wheel: manchego

Starting a new wheel today

Manchego

6 gal whole cows milk

Olive oil coated rind

Last one was aged 2 months and would have been even better with more time in the cave.

Cheese fridge moved

Well, the stars finally aligned, and I got through cheese ageing 'cave' moved to my house. I will now be able to increase production and keep a close eye on the wheels as they age.

Ageing the cheese in my regular refrigerator takes way too long and takes up too much space. This is going to make things much easier!

Delphinium Cheese Kickstarter Project, next steps

The Kickstarter project ends in 44 hours, and then I will get all the funds ($1450 so far!) to put into the cheese making.

I've already ordered and received all the cultures I need, a 10 gallon NSF stainless stock pot, a hot plate for warming the milk and curds, extra probes for the digital thermometer, and a pH meter.

I still need a salometer, the arduino microprocessor and sensors (for the fridge), and a few more molds for different shapes of cheese.

Next week I'm going to pay a visit to the CA Dept. of Food and Agriculture Milk & Dairy Food Safety office in downtown Oakland to start the certification process so everything is legal and above-board with the regulating agencies. Also, a few friends are coming over to get a hands-on lesson in making a wheel of hard cheese. Not sure what we're making yet, but I'll post photos of the process.

Everything is coming together nicely so far. Very exciting!

Fridge is cleaned and working!

Just got back from cleaning out the fridge and getting it set up.

Twice over with simple green and then a bleach solution, and it was sparkling like new. I plugged it in, hoping for the best, and it got cold fast - down to 35°F in about 5 minutes! Of course that's way too cold for cheese - 55°F is the target temp - so I set it to the lowest setting and left it. I'm going back later to see what temperature it holds, then adjust it as necessary.

The old fluorescent tubes in the fridge are dead and will be removed, then replaced with some LEDs to cut down on energy use. It's not really necessary, but i think it will look cool. I also need to figure out where to put the electronics for the wireless/arduino temperature and humidity monitoring.

Kickstarter project launch!

Just launched my Kickstarter.com fundraising drive last night.

Kickstarter is a "crowdsourcing" site, where you can create a project and solicit backing from anywhere in the world. It's a great idea, and one that's sure to grow in popularity. There are tons of great projects there that deserve funding. Go have a look.

I set my funding goal at a modest $1,200 which is enough to cover a cow share, a couple large stock pots, electric hot plates, and to round out my selection of starter cultures and supplies. Well, it's been only 24 hours, and I'm already at $920 of backing! Amazing.

I can't wait to see where this goes.

Dry Jack mini-wheel

I just cut into a 1 month old wheel of dry jack to check its progress. Pretty good so far, and it seems like it's on the right track to becoming a good and proper dry jack with another 6 months of aging. There was quite a bit of blue-green mold on the rind, so its likely that there was too much moisture in the mini-fridge. The large fridge should be more stable with temp and humidity.

One thing I noticed right away is that I didn't salt the curds enough before pressing. Dry jack typically has a high salt content. This batch was a 2-gallon mini-wheel experiment to test out the new press I built (photos coming soon!).

The next one will be better!

Aging and remotely monitoring temp/humidity

This past weekend, i picked up my cheese aging "cave" - a large commercial refrigerator with glass doors. (looks like the one in the photo here). It was used at a natural foods co-op in Sacramento, but has been retired and in storage for a while.

The owner - a friend of a friend - gifted me the fridge to use for cheese making, which was super generous because I don't even know them. I'll meet them soon enough though - I definitely owe them some cheese for this!

We don't really have space for it, so the fridge is going to live in a storage room under a friend's house. It's in downtown Oakland, a few miles from my own home, so I got to thinking that it would be very handy to be able to monitor the temp and humidity in the fridge remotely.

I've been playing around with the Arduino microprocessor lately and checking out other peoples' projects, and recalled seeing something about a twitter-ing humidor that used an Arduino. I googled "arduino hygrometer" and this came up.

Looks easy enough to implement, right? I'm going to order another Arduino, the hygrometer/thermometer sensor, and an XBee wireless module. I'll be sure to document the project and post it on Instructables and here so that you can build your own.

Yes, I am going to have a wireless tweeting refrigerator.