Braggot outcome & Cheese Experiments

It is almost 60 days since my first cheese after my hiatus, so a sampling will happen soon.  I have battled the blue-molds and the cheese has a nice hard rind. Think I'll look for a "trier" (a tool that allows you to sample a small core from your cheese) so that I have a better handle on the aging process.  Since the first, hard cheese, I've now got two, softer Tomme cheeses aging in the pantry. 

But the wild experiment I just tried I'll call a "Hop Cheese".  Its a hard cheese that has a small amount of hops mixed in with the curd. The idea came to me last fall, as I sat and talked with a dear friend at the Madison County Hop Festival. Other herbs are routinely added to cheese, so why not hops? Stay tuned and we shall see.

The "Fumee` Braggot Noir" is now in the sampling/evaluation stages.  My initial reaction is that the recipe needs tweaking because you would not know there was 3 lbs. of Buckwheat Honey in the mix - and that's the whole point of a Braggot Ale - it's half honey.  What I have (and this is not a bad thing) is a smoked porter. The chocolate malt and the smoked malt overpower any flavors the buckwheat honey may have contributed.  It is a very good tasting smoked porter, but a little disappointing just the same.  I have a second attempt at a Braggot sitting in the secondary fermenter now that also uses the Buckwheat honey but the base-ale is really a wheat beer.  Maybe this will work better.

Until then... Peace
Cheesey-boy