Artisan Cheese Making: Coastal Blue

Coastal Blue Cheese.


So...I've never been a huge blue cheese fan. It kinda grossed me out to think of eating...MOLD. But then, when I started making cheese, I learned that there is mold and then there is... mold. The ones you control actually behave more like a probiotic, from what I understand. The greenish/blue-ish/grayish stuff that grows randomly on cheese is not the stuff we wanna be eating. Nope. No sir. Ick. But the kind that you sort of baby and groom and work at...? Yep. That's the good stuff!


I decided to do the Coastal Blue cheese from Mary's book. It was fairly easy to make. I got it done fairly quickly and it smelled utterly divine! I just had to wait for that blue-ish mold to start making its presence known. Today, it did!

Coastal Blue at 12 days.

I went down to the cheese cave and had a peek, to tend to all my cheesy babies down there and for the first time, I saw movement! Well, not LITERALLY movement, but change. My piercings into the cheese are doing just what they're supposed to do and it looks GREAT! I'm so excited to try this...


Soon, my prrrrrrrecious!


The Caerphilly is finally developing its rind too. The Jack is looking' fabulous. The Tallegio...whoa. Man. The fragrance is beyond amazing.




But...I think the one cheese I was most excited to make, watch and then of course, consume, was this blue. It feels like I've just graduated to a higher skill level. haha.


I'll post more pix and info on this at a later date. Right now, I've got 200 cheese recipes to go through to decide which I'll do next...


Until then, I remain,


Your Friendly Neighborhood CheeseLady.


Update 1: The blue is now enveloping the entire cheese! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to just leave it be or wipe it down with vinegar/salt water but I'm about to find out. At any rate, it's a huge phenomenon in my cheese cave. Others that I've done that are supposed to have some sort of mold rind haven't developed anything like this one. The fragrance is sweet and not too strong. I can barely wait for the tasting!