Cheese - Reasonable cheese brining

This part 3 of reasonable cheese will see me treating the outer layer of the cheese to form a skin or rind.

I successfully made my Reasonable Cheese, and eventually pressing it into shape and a cheese-like consistency. The next step was to stop it going rotten. From what I can tell, there appears to be a few different ways of doing this including doing nothing at all, waxing, salting, soaking in brine, rubbing with vinegar, or simply eating it right away.

I chose brining.

First I created a saturated salt solution. I mixed salt into water until I could mix no more. It turned out to be around 200g of salt in 800ml of hot water.

I left it to cool, then added my Reasonable Cheese to sit overnight in the brine.

Ten hours later I discovered a thing that looked a lot like a cheese.











Now I wait. And wait. For between two and six months.

I'm not sure if this cheese worked or not yet. It seems like it may have, but there is no way for the novice to have any real clue as to the success or otherwise of this project for months to come.

This cheese was quite complicated to make and required some specialist equipment. There was a lot to learn, and still is a lot to learn. One major concern I have is the size of the cheese. A small cheese will turn to a small cheese rind before its even ready to eat. I suspect that's why a lot of small cheeses are waxed. ie To prevent them drying out. The first cheese I attempted is already more of a cheese rind than a cheese.

I will make more of this kind, or similar table cheese, but will do so with a great deal more planning and some more equipment. I will also make much bigger cheeses and more of them. I think, to be practical, a batch of cheese would need to be made with more like twenty or thirty litres of milk rather than four litres. There is also the issue of cost. Unless this cheese turns out to be very special indeed, it will have cost much more than it will be worth. Having said that, I am now in possession of the only cheese of its kind. And the last piece of it at that. Effectively an almost un-reproducible, and thus priceless cheese by any standard.

Or not.

Only a great deal of time will tell.