The Waiting Game

Once bitten by the cheese-making bug, you will go to extraordinary lengths to provide the perfect maturing cave.

Moorlands has dedicated, imaginative customers sharing their solutions to ensure their home-made cheese has the best start in life.

UK cities are particular hot spots, with cheese making happening in flats, terraces and even bedsits. Under stairs cupboards are being turned into caves; insulated boxes are springing up on balconies, in garden sheds and garages. Very important to make sure your insulated box is rodent proof though ...

Of course, most modern fridges have much better temperature control nowadays, with the bottom salad compartment being perfect for maturing soft cheeses and great to store matured, hard cheese between meals.

Making hard cheese is all about the waiting game, but making cheese regularly will reward you with a succession of delicious achievements.

For more cheesemaking tips and information about our kits and products, please visit www.cheesemaking.co.uk

Keep It Fresh!

Once you’ve made your tasty cheese, you want to be sure to store it correctly in order to keep it fresh. Many people think the best way to store cheese is by wrapping it in cling film (indeed many shop-bought cheeses are wrapped in plastic) but this traps moisture and encourages the growth of mould. We recommend that you wrap your cheese in waxed paper or ultra-fine polypropylene sheets (depending on the type of cheese), which will prevent the cheese from becoming too dry and prevent the build-up of excess moisture. To store soft cheeses, wax coated paper product code 0154 is best, whilst hard cheeses benefit from being wrapped in ultra-fine polypropylene sheets, product code 0157. See http://www.cheesemaking.co.uk/cheese-making-cheese-wrap to read more and place an order.

Then there’s the question of whether to refrigerate cheese. It’s possible to keep hard cheeses in an environment with a constant temperature of 8-15°C, but soft cheeses really do need refrigeration. To get the best of the cheese’s flavour, it’s best to remove it from the fridge up to an hour before serving.

Another important thing to remember is that mould ripened cheeses need to be stored completely separately from non-mould ripened cheeses, to avoid cross contamination.  Blue and white mould ripened cheeses also need to be stored separately from one another. If you need to store both in the same area, they should be placed in different, sealed containers and when handling the cheeses, the blue cheese boxes should be opened and handled last, to minimise cross contamination.

 

Got any questions about cheese making and storage? Then visit Moorlands http://www.cheesemaking.co.uk/qa where we’re pleased to provide lots of answers!