Failed camembrie and First Hard Cheese

This is a bit of a mixed post. We tried the latest batch of camembries a while ago and I didn't have the heart to post an update at the time. They were vile. Very sharp and one-dimensional. They looked great but they didn't taste it. I'll pick over my notes and try to figure out why a bit later but to some extent I think that dealing with sensitive micro-organisms on a home scale with only very basic testing and environmental control I'm just likely to have the occasional bad batch. I do remember the curd tasting funny (sharp and almost lemony) when I tried some fresh, but I don't really know what caused it. It does point towards something more fundamental than bad maturation though. Perhaps the milk wasn't right. Perhaps I dropped a lemon in by mistake.

Anyway, on a slightly more positive note a friend bought me a Dutch Press for my birthday and so today I've attempted my first hard cheese. A fascinating process! Quite different to what I've done before and the heating and -- relative to soft cheese -- rough treatment of the curd felt all wrong. Still, the results I've ended up with so far seem perfect according to my recipe and I'm currently pressing what I suppose must be in the region of 1lb of cheese.

From the usual 12 pints of milk I got my pint of yoghurt, the Main Feature hard cheese as mentioned above, a small quantity of ricotta, and some left over hard cheese curds which I mixed with half a clove of garlic and some black pepper to make a boursin-style cheese.

The main different with the hard cheese recipe has been that the curds are cut, stirred, drained and then mixed gently by hand with salt before keeping warm and repeatedly breaking up for an hour or so. Finally this mixture is wrapped in cheese cloth and pressed gradually at first and more firmly later in the press. There is much more separation of curd and whey before the cheese enters the mold and so even under pressure the contents of a normal camembert size mould (10x10x10) has not greatly diminished in the first hour or two. Maybe by 10-20%. Contrast this with camembries which lose half their volume in the space of a few hours and express buckets (literally) of whey.

One other thing that I've been wondering, looking at this recipe and others for soft cheeses, is whether I shouldn't be cutting the curd for soft cheeses and instead scooping large chunks of it out whole. The results have been good but messy as much curd has squeezed through the holes in the moulds. One to investigate next time.