Making Cheese with Mike Rowe

Now, this is enough culture to satisfy 4000 pounds. This will actually do 5000 pounds, a little bit extra, not a bad thing. Do I just pour it straight in or pour it straight down the length of the vat? Run it up the length, all right? There we go. So now we're just basically mixing. Yes. I've never raped milk before. Awesome. The perfect storm. Whoops. Oh dear. Maybe we will slow down. Just a little. Oh my goodness. Everybody's got it. All right, there we go. I think if the milk is raked. At this point, in the cheese making process, we're waiting for the milk to heat up to 90°F, at which point another ingredient will be added. During this critical time, there is virtually nothing to do. The milk is now at 90°. Time to add a new ingredient. What does that new ingredient? Right now we're going to add rennet, which is the enzyme from a cast stomach. What it's going to do is set that milk up to a custard like state. Like so. So right now what's happening in here is this renin. Has just come face to face with all this milk, and it's immediately interacting with it, turning it into something chunky. Yep. So how long does it need to set at this point? It will set 40 minutes after this. 40 minutes. 40 minutes. 

So we're checking to see how the congealing is coming. Pretty well. Perfect. So if it doesn't stick to your fingers, it's basically ready. It's ready to go. Okay, and when you say go, what does that mean? That means we're going to cut. We're going to cut the cheese. We're going to cut the cheese. So this is the cheese knife. Looks like a cheese grater almost. These are plastic. Fish lime. Fish lime. Take it all the way down to the bottom, and slide it across. So we're separating the curds from the whey, right? Right. This is the Curt basically the solid solid parts in the milk and the way, which is the liquid parts of the milk. And basically that's why you're doing the cut. You want to separate the solids from the liquids in the milk. At this point, in the cheese making process, the curds have been cut. And the cheese has begun to cook. Now the temperature must be brought to 102°F, and the contents of the vat continuously raked. During this critical time period, Ken. We'll have absolutely nothing to do. 

All right, the whole team has been assembled right now for this part of the process. This is Mark and Mark, what's happening with the whole batch being grained, right? Basically we're in a drain three quarters of the way I keep a quarter of the way in the vat, and then what we're going to do is transfer all the Kurds and the remaining way from this vat here into the Kurds sink. So the way goes away and the Kurds go over there. Yes. After four hours, 11 minutes and 23 seconds, we finally had something that resembled cheese. Got some weight to it. Now the race was on to keep the Kurds separated before the cheese was pressed. So the job here is to keep it broken up, right? We got it. All right. I mean, before we wanted it to congeal, now we don't. Now we want to break it up. All right. Breaking up the curds. I washed. It's like magnets and steel. They really want to be together. Assault's going to help. Salt. So all cheese has salt in it. Oh, jeez, you need it as a preservative. And flavor enhancer. All right. You guys can really warn me, but suddenly when I mean, we sit around waiting. 

All day, and then all of a sudden it's like, this is the hard work right here. This is where the magic happens, so. Are you kidding me? Well, one minute we're sitting around having a nice day. You know, scrubbing out of that here and there. Next minute. Hurry up, Mike. Come on, like the Iraq and everything. Come on, what we're doing here then is you're measuring out cheese wheels, essentially. These are basically gonna be cheese wheels, and we're, you know, they're gonna be two and a half pounders. Right? The molds weigh three pounds. Right. And then we're gonna put three pounds occurred in the molds as well. So we're basically going for a 6 pound weight right here. As they weigh the cheese, I need to keep separating the curd. Otherwise, it'll go in in great big giant clumps and then mark or can or Cynthia or somebody who's gonna give me a hard time about it. I'll just have to work twice. The final stage of cheesemaking involves this steam press, which will squeeze the remaining liquid out of 87 two and a half pound wheels. Three 40 pound molds and one 25 pound hold. That's a lot of cheese. $3000 worth to be exact. 

These are dummies, empty ones to create the necessary dynamic tension. In the press, I'm gonna now turn the lever on the press. Behold. All the way is being pressed out. Oh yeah. And so the way goes away. After hours of measuring, pouring, stirring, battling curds, waiting, and waiting some more, the result. A nearly completed wheel of Crowley, Colby cheese. I say nearly because all it's missing is the wax, mark's going to take care of that in a moment. Where are we now in the drying room? AJ. We're going to dry in room. How long does it take two and a half pounds of cheese to dry before you can risk putting the wax on it? I would say it usually three to four days. And where is said application completed? That's the wax cauldron in the foyer. Yeah, we got a paraffin and beeswax in there. It's about 220°. Why do people seal cheese in paraffin and beeswax? Well, you need a good sealer. So what it does is with the cheese, if you don't have wax, it's going to create some mold. So, you know, we're making a Cheddar type cheese here so we don't want the blue cheese. So we need to seal it up pretty good. Okay. 

So, and then just grab the handles and put it in the wax cauldron for about 15 seconds. Is that hot? It's hot. All right, I'm going in. One, two, three, four, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14. 15. Looks good. That's it. We're done. And then bring it on bring it on over to the left. Okay. And I would say you're going to see some see those air bubbles. These are air bubbles right here. You got it. And then you got a paintbrush here and just wax those guys. Just sort of brush them out. We paint. On each one. Like so? Like so a little bit more force. Okay. Be aggressive. Don't baby the cheese. Okay. And then another dip in the wax. We apply each one. Each time. Okay. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. And again. And again, for how long? Just quick dip flashed yet, a little flash wax. Yeah, you got it. Wow, sorry, Martin. No, that's okay. We got in my good sense. Here we go. And? It goes down. It comes on. Oh, yeah. It would make any cheese. Well, there it is. My day at Crowley cheese. They've been here for over a hundred years. Chances are they'll be here a hundred years from now. Making cheese the old fashioned way. With curds and whey, and a little bit of help from Robert Crowley junior