Sheep and/or Goat Cheese sampling:

Here is a sample of a French cheese made from a blend of goat and sheep milk. I enjoyed the earthy flavors and the aroma was not too strong. 
From the website "WB Cheese" (world's best cheese) comes this description:
Onetik, one of the largest producers of Ossau-Iraty, makes this 2-3-month aged tomme. Whereas most Basque cheeses are made entirely of sheep's milk, sheep and goats' milk are used here to create a well-balanced cheese, with a friendly, nuanced flavor that will please the palates of novices and gourmands alike. Nutty, sweet and herbal, with a clean finish. It has a toothsome, semi-firm texture, and is covered with a rustic natural rind. 

The first cheese that I sampled after the trip to Wegman's Cheese Department was called Miti Cana Oveja.  It is a sheep's milk cheese from Spain with a semi-soft center and a bloomy, white rind.  It was not over-powering in either its aroma or flavor, just a tasty, slightly-salty center section surrounded by a layer just inside the rind that was creamier.  The cheese is made in the shape of a log, about 3 inches in diameter. (not my picture, but very true to the piece I bought)

Hope this inspires you to try something different from the cheese-monger near you.
Peace,
Cheesey-boy 

Mid-winter sampling

In an effort to not let this Blog sit too long between entries, I will tell you of some sampling I have done and will do.

I stopped by the cheese department of my local supermarket named Wegman's and picked up a variety of imported cheese to sample. Also grabbed a 6-pack of Brooklyn Brown Ale and Ruthless Rye from Sierra Nevada for good measure.  Maybe a Rhine wine would be good for this project too. (more later about my own "Braggot" experiments).  I will try the Port Salut this weekend,......













but I did open a small 'puck' of Saint Vernier. Saint Vernier a soft washed-rind cheese that is made in the Haute Jura region of France. The rind is washed with a local wine 'Affine au vin de Savagnin (Jura)' that gives the cheese its stickiness and the rind also shows the red bacteria "b.linens" that makes a strong aroma that might scare you at first.  But, have faith and give this cheese a few minutes to air-out. The flavor of the cheese is extremely rich and soft; it has a delicate sherry-like flavor and when you cut the cheese it is so creamy and soft it runs for your crackers. Quite delicious!

More to follow, gotta go shovel snow from Winter Storm "Nemo" - great! now the Weather Channel can hype winter storms, too.

Peace
Cheesey-boy

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

Still Here

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, or move south of the border.
"Other things" have been at the forefront, but I've recovered the Blog password and will proceed.

After a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat I once again got the urge to make some cheese.  I had to do some hunting to find the cheese press, and the culture I used was way old, but I think i have a decent cheese made in the style of Asiago cheese.  Time will tell, of course.

Meanwhile, an update on the Brewery:
I have tried a new (to me) style called Braggot (rhymes with maggot).
If you combine barley malt and honey in near-equal proportions and ferment it, you have a Braggot-ale.
I have named mine "Fumee` Braggot Noir" as it is a dark, smokey malt mix with Buckwheat honey as well. I mashed Smoked Malt, Chocolate Malt, Dark-Crystal Malt and added Amber DME.  It has been hopped quite well with Northern-Brewer and Nelson Sauvin (from New Zealand); the hops should balance the residual sweetness of the buckwheat honey.  It is currently sitting in the secondary fermenter and may get bottled up this next weekend.

That's All For Now - just needed to check in.
Peace.
"Cheesey-boy"

Muenster on the loose!

Several weeks back I made what I'll call a Muenster-style cheese (I was actually following a Brick Cheese recipe but they are very similar) complete with Red bacterium on the surface. It's been aging well, but i coated it with wax and noticed the wax starting to puff out a little. I cut off the wax and found the surface to be still very wet but looking normal. So I dried it out for a few hours and re-waxed it. I'll give it a few more weeks before I cut it open.

Made another Tomme-style, hard cheese Saturday; with cow milk instead of goat this time. The style gives me pretty good cheese each time, plus I still have the culture to use up.

Homemade yogurt has been very successful. I add a little vanilla extract when I set it in the Coleman cooler to incubate. It was delicious on top of my Duncan Hines Spice cake!

On the beer topic: if you can find Sam Adams Winter Lager in a store near you, try it. The label lists several ingredients that would normally be associated with Belgian-style beers (orange peel, spices) but the resulting beer is very pleasant to those who do not particularly like the bold Belgian beers. It is seasonal, so it won't be in the stores much longer. My own beers are aging well, but the Lager is by far the best.

peace;
Cheesey-boy

New Year, New Outlook

Six-months later...
Divorce is over, house is once more solely mine, sanity is intact and the desire to forge ahead with Bread, Beer & Cheese is re-newed! whew!!

The beer cellar currently holds three batches of homebrew that are aging. I've made a Dunkel-weiss (dark wheat), English Pale Ale, and a German Lager. Each one seems to be on-target for the particular style, and I'm thinking they will only improve with a few more weeks of aging. I have been working towards all-grain brewing but have to improve the equipment if I really want to mash many pounds of grain. The Lager was done without the benefit of malt extracts and the yield was not as many gallons as it should have been; due to troubles with my setup.

In the Cheese Department I have been happy with the results of an October batch which was made using goat milk and Flora Danica culture to approximate a Havarti-style cheese. I also received a little X-mas gift from Vermont; a chunck of cheese that I helped make at the Cheesemaking Class at Bardwell Farm, back in April. A very solid cheese, almost a grating cheese, but still slice-able, and delicious.

I've also been making yogurt at home, both with purchased cultures and lately with store-bought yogurt. I'm looking into methods for improving the incubation equipment and methods to make the process better.

Breadmaking hasn't happened simply because of the limitations with my 1940's vintage, Chambers gas stove. My oven thermostat is not functional, so anything I do bake has to be watched and regulated by propping the oven door open just enough to keep the temperature in a plus or minus 5 degree range.

Anyways, I'm still here and I'm looking for 2011 to be the first year of the next great chapter of my life.

Peace,
Cheesey-boy

Transfiguration in process

transfiguration - n. To change radically the appearance or shape of

I've been holding back on posting any topics lately because the Cheesey-boy is divorcing.
Cheese making has been temporarily suspended due to the uncertainties of the home situation. I also really need to devise a better aging and storage setup before I get any more cheeses stashed down cellar. The cellar is really too dry for a proper cheese cave.

But I will share my impressions of something from the Beer department of B,B & C.

I bought a summer 12-pack of Magic Hat beers that I highly recommend. They make a pale ale simply called #9 that I think is just about the perfect example of what a Pale Ale should taste and smell like. In there is also "Odd Notion" a Belgian-style ale that I liked very much too. The other two beers in the variety pack were an IPA and something else not so notable. If you see Magic Hat beers in the store, buy some; I think you'll enjoy.

Peace,
Cheesey-boy