Say CHEESE

Monday girl power gathered at Caramel Apple Farm to make cheese.  Two days later:
CHEESE - 12 1/2 pounds of it.

12 pounds of cheese, Gouda and cheddar

It started out with 8 girls and twelve GALLONS of fabulous goat milk

Iris and Bumblebee

Peter

Well these guys had nothing to do with it.  Iris and Bumblebee are kids from this season and Peter is a wether from last season.  Sargent is MaMa to all of these beauties.

After heating the milk, ripening it with the culture and coagulating it with rennet, then cutting it into small pieces this is what it looks like:  Curds and whey:

Slowly the curds are heated to 95 degrees ( 98 for cheddar)  until they look like this:

Becka (Denise and Autumn in the kitchen)

We had five fabulous young women to help us: Liz, Becka, Ella, Kate and Kaitlin

Ella at the press

Kate and Kaitlin making quills in the rest time

Ready for the press:

Then the Gouda went into the salt brine for 8 hours and the cheddar was salted and dried countertop

wheel of fresh (un-aged) cheddar

We used a week's worth of milk from 6 does.  Three goat owners and 5 fabulous human girl kids started at 10 o'clock Monday morning and I have just finished waxing and sealing on Friday night.  Now the hardest part- waiting for it to age so we can eat this wonderful cheese.

Bon Appetit!

Smokin' cheese

Well here in Colorado (and other states in this country as well) there is a lot of smoking going on - and I don't mean tobacco- but today I smoked my first cheese.

smoky golden color

 CoCo gives me enough milk each week to make a 2-3 pound wheel of Gouda cheese.  It needs to age at least 2 months to get a great flavor but it's my favorite goat milk product so far.  Now if I could just smoke the outside.
Cheese has to be cold smoked: creating smoke but not letting get higher than 90 degrees in the smoker or the cheese will melt.  So what better day to smoke than today

snowy February day

The cheese is formed in a mold with pressure and then soaked in a salt brine for 12 hours.  Then it "dries" tabletop for 5 days.  That hard rind on the edge of your cheese that you buy is just the dry part...same ingredients as the edible cheese

2 1/2 pounds of dried un-aged Gouda
I week of milk from one Mama

I sliced the cheese to be 2 inches thick and placed it on a SS rack 

Put the A-Maze-N smoker in the belly of my tiny Weber

And added the cheese

Two hours later:

A really smoky fragrance and a beautiful golden color.  Now I must wax it and let it age.  Ready in 2-6 months

Bon Appetit!

WHEY to go Sunflower

milk products in a week - well a long week

This weeks work in the kitchen with fresh goat milk.  Each day at 7 am and again at 7 pm Sunflower and I go to the milking parlor to do our farm thing.  Each trip I am given about 3 cups of delicious milk.  This summer I have been drinking it straight or in an iced coffee but at the end of each week I take my milk collected from the week and start making cheese.  I started with cheddar.  I'll wax it and place it in the basement to age.  It takes 2 gallons of milk to make 2 1/4 pounds of cheddar cheese.  Then I took 1/2 gallon and made chèvre which is shaped and dried in tube cheese molds - about 1 pound.  Flavor it with anything but today it was an herb blend from Penzey's  Spice called Sunny Paris.  Today I made mozzarella from a gallon of milk-makes 1 1/2 pounds.  These leaves a lot of whey which I hate to pour down the drain so I bring the whey to 200 deg and add 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and the remainder of milk in the whey will become ricotta- really squeezing the last bit of cheese out of the process.  Now what to do with the whey?  Take it back out to the barnyard and feed it to the chickens - oh Sunny and CoCo like it too.
This is the main reason I started raising goats 3 years ago.  I adore these animals but I love it when I can make their milk into wonderful good.  Now I will go out to find some eggplant to make into eggplant Parmesan 
Thanks Sunny!
Whey to go!

Whey to go Sunny!!!!