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Curd Nerd Newsletter Edition #27
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G'day Curd Nerds. Dry Jack. An odd-looking cheese! To me it looks like a brown belly button, but to others, maybe not so much. It has been said in the video comments that it has striking similarities to a Rhino's butt. Read on for more updates on this unique cheese.
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Dry Jack Update - 1 Month
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Yes, a striking photo for the thumbnail. A video thumbnail that made people click on it to learn more about this strange-looking cheese that "allegedly" looks like a Rhino's butt ☺.
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I've known about Dry Jack for quite a while but didn't know much about it. As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, it originated from California, USA and it was created out of a Monterey Jack cheese in 1915, when a San Francisco cheese wholesaler (D.F. DeBernardi) stored and forgot about his over-supply of wheels of fresh Jack Cheese.
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When shipments of hard cheese from Europe were interrupted as WWI progressed, he rediscovered the well-aged Jack Cheese in his warehouse. The success of this cheese was assured when he and his customers found that the aged Jack had acquired a rich, nutty flavour. He found a perfect fit for this cheese with his Italian-American customers who quickly adopted the alternative. Other cheese makers began making the Dry Jack. Shipments soon reached across the country to the East Coast of the USA.
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So basically, Dry Jack comes about by aging fresh Monterey Jack cheese for seven months up to more than two years. This will develop a very dry and complex flavour and, with extended age, makes a great cheese for grating or breaking into chunks and eating much like an aged parma-style cheese.
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Whilst DeBernardi was the first to coat the cheese with oil, pepper, and lamp black, an ebony pigment made from oil lamp soot (no worse than the ash we all love on our fresh goat cheeses), in the mid-20th century, Ig Vella from Sonoma changed the Dry Jack rub to his signature oil, powdered cocoa and black pepper, which I also used for my version of this cheese.
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Now because my Dry Jack is very small compared to the ones made in California, I will only be aging mine for 3 months or I believe it will be too dry.
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So, please take the time to watch the video to see how I cleaned and recoated the cheese with a fresh rub. The next update will be at two months of age!
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How to Make a Cheese Fridge
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Many of you have asked how I mature my cheese and what conditions are required to facilitate this. Well, I have a cheese fridge which is where I place all my cheese when it is ready to mature and affinage.
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I maintain mine at a temperature range of 11-13°C or 52-55.4°F. The humidity varies because I use ripening boxes to maintain the relative humidity for individual cheese, or just wax or vacuum package the cheese wheel whereby no humidity regulation in the fridge is required.
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So how do you make a cheese fridge, I hear you ask? Well, the easiest way for the home cheese maker to maintain the temperature for maturation is to convert a standard refrigerator or under-counter small fridge using an external thermostat.
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I used to use a wine fridge but found that the temperature would drift during our hot summer here in Australia. I then decided to convert a conventional refrigerator to a cheese fridge.
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CONVERSION PROCESS
The process of converting a fridge is straightforward. All you need to do is source an external thermostat (recommendations below), plug in the refrigerator of your choice to the cooling socket, set the desired temperature on the controller, then place the temperature sensor probe through the door seal and loosely tie it to a rack in the fridge.
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Once set, the fridge will automatically turn on and off as required to maintain the desired temperature!
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Then all you have to do is fill your new cheese fridge with lots of delicious cheese that you’ve made in your very own kitchen. Easy peasy lotsa cheesy!
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RECOMMENDATIONS
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Next week - Goat Milk Cheddar
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The next featured video will be Goat Milk Cheddar. It is aging nicely in the cheese fridge and I am turning it weekly for even ripening. I'm very excited to see how this cheese turns out. It will be ready for tasting in 3 months.
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Product of the Month - MM100
We now have a new strain of starter culture available for you to purchase. We have limited stock, so be quick! It is a moderate acidifier with some gas and high diacetyl production.
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MM100 contains specific strains of;
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- Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis
- Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris
- Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis
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$10.00
A manageable 50-litre packet of MM100 Mesophilic culture suitable for Continental cheese types (Gouda, Edam, Leerdam and Samsoe) as well as soft ripened, and fresh (unripened) cheeses (Brie, Camembert, Havarti, Blue and Chevre) cheeses.
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Dosage; Use 1/4 tsp. per 4 litres (1 gallon). 1/2 tsp. per 10 L (2.5 gal)
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I've had a flood of feedback that you want a physical version of my two cheese-making eBooks. Well, these have been available for over 2 years, and it seems that not many know where to purchase them. So to keep the cost of production down, I print and spiral bind them myself. You can pick up both books in a bundle below.
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$80.85 $72.77 inc GST
Get both of Gavin's cheese-making books in a bundle. Keep Calm and Make Cheese (book 1) and Keep Calm and Make More Cheese (book 2) with 10% off the RRP.
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If you have any questions about home cheesemaking, the best place to get them answered is during my weekly live stream "Ask the Cheeseman". Ask your questions in the chat and I will be more than happy to attempt to answer them for you.
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Thanks for reading and don't forget that if you have any questions about cheese making or want to book some consultation time with me, just reply to this email and I'll get back to you promptly.
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