Gruyere #1 after 1 month

After a month of brining every few days the Gruyere developed and good enough rind to be oiled. This will help protects the cheese from unwanted surface microorganisms and control's the moisture content.

• Do not use on small cheeses
• Oil should be applied lightly over a number of days until a hard skin has developed. Once this has developed it can then be done every month
• Lightly pressed washed curd type cheeses such as Gouda and Edam should not be oiled because these types of cheeses have a high pH early in the aging process. Because of this there is lot of food on their surface which can cause yeast to grow.
• Salt can be added to help control surface mold
• Oiling too early with cheese still moist can result in yeast injections
• Dip cloth in the oil, dab it on the rind, then wipe the excess off
• Cheeses should be aged for 8 days to produce a natural rind before oiling
  

Gruyere #1 Rind Development

wipe/scrub down every day for 3 days with a 20% brine, then every other day for 5 days, then twice a week for 3 weeks. This washing/scrubbing helps prepare the rind by introducing various cultures that over the weeks protect the cheese pate. As you can see the rind is starting to harden.

Gruyere

I have tried gruyere before without success, I think the main reason was poor quality milk and the lack of propionic shermanii powder. This time round I'm equipped with some good quality raw Guernsey milk from hurdlebrook farm and shermanii powder. To start with I warmed my 1.5 gallon of milk to 33c and added a sachet of thermophil, this is meant for emmantal but I'm hoping it will do the job! After 10 minutes I added 3/4 spoon of shermanii powder and also 1/8 tsp of lipase (sharp) I shouldn't really need this but I added some pasteurised store milk to bulk out the expensive raw milk. I then left this for another 10 minutes before adding just under 1/2 tsp of liquid animal rennet. The aim is to get a good cut around 40 minutes after adding the rennet. It ended up taking around 1 hour before the curds were ready to cut. After doing so I stured them for 15 minutes and then used a balloon whisk to cut the curds gently into smaller pieces. As I did this I raised the temperature to 48c over 40 minuted. By now a great deal of whey had been expelled due to the size of each curd and the temperature.

Below you can see the different staged of shrinkage during cooking for 40 minutes raising the temperature from 32c to 48c.







They were then pressed at 20lb for 20 minutes. Rewrtapped and pressed at 30lb for 2 hours. I then pressed it over night at 50 lb. The resulting cheese was smaller that teh usual Gouda and also very firm. The wheel was then left in a 20% brine for 8 hours and placed in teh cave. Over the next few weeks Ill wash the wheel with a light salted brine and then store for a minimum time of 6 months at 7c.