I made gouda today almost totally by myself.
You'll have seen some of these pics before, but I thought the start-to-finish process would be fun. Enjoy. :)
First, you start with a happy, lactating cow. (I don't have a picture of one because they buy the cow milk from another dairy...I'd draw a picture if I felt more motivated, but I'll just let you use your imagination. SO, Step 1: Happy Cow.)
This is the milk tank. I drained about 50 gallons from the tank and carried each bucketful to the pasteurizer.
Then we stirred it in the pasteurizer for a while, heated it, added rennet and culture and calcium chloride, then let it sit. When it was thickened, we cut it with a knife to check the texture/thickness...
Then curded it and drained the whey.
The waste whey gets pumped out to the goats, and we save a bucket or two for the pigs.
Whey = high protein beverage that they get super excited about.
The remaining curds sit for a bit while the whey drains...
Then we start cutting out the rounds with the molds - like cookie cutters!
Pack in the cheese for consistent-ish sizes....
Then put the tops on, lay the top rack on it and clamp it all down in their home-made cheese press.
When they've dried out a bit, we remove them from the molds and eventually they'll look like this... (covered in a sanitized "cheesecloth" to protect them from whatever's in the air)...
And you've seen this pic before, but once they've dried we put them in brine for a couple days...
Then let them dry, and cover them in an Elmer's Glue sort of concoction...
And then wax them...
In the freezer room there are two manholes that go down into two separate cellars called the "cheese caves" where the cheese goes to age for a few months (at least) before we pull them up and wedge and wax and label them for sale. Kinda creepy at first. You can only wear your socks in there...which is kinda fun.
I can't believe this time last week I was in Sedona, AZ. Crazy.
Tomorrow we're making cheddar curds and prepping for farmers market.
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