Advanced Cheesemaking : Pepper Appenzeller Cheese (with Farm Fresh Milk!)

Quick intro - I've been a hobby homesteader since 2012 (Anvil Acre Farm on Facebook), and my farm focuses on dairy goats, ducks, and chickens - which I care for like family, and use the milk, meat, and eggs for most of what my family needs. I am an avid cheesemaker, baker, chef, blacksmith, homesteading teacher, and I also make/sell homemade personal care products like goat milk soap, lip balm, lotion, hair conditioners, beard oil, insect repellent, etc.

This week I had an extra 1.5 gallons of milk from my sweet goat Ginny to use up, so for this round of cheesemaking I did a "pepperjack" version of my crowd-pleasing Appenzeller recipe. This cheese is similar in taste and texture to pepperjack you'd find at the grocery store: stiff but smooth when cutting, with a mild creamy taste, although my version is a bit saltier with a more complex and interesting flavor (in my opinion).

This is not exactly a beginner recipe - if this is your first time reading a cheesemaking recipe, you might not have (or maybe even heard of) some of the items in the supplies list. That's ok! My first cheese was a white cheddar, which was far too ambitious for my meager beginnings - and I had to get pretty creative on how to get a wheel of cheese from those first uncertain curds! However, if you're really interested in jumping in head first with cheesemaking - or if you're already familiar and want to explore making an aged washed curd cheese like this one - have no fear, prepare to forgive your mistakes, and forge ahead.

This is not a "fresh cheese" recipe - meaning, this cheese is intended to be allowed to age for some time before eating it, not to be eaten immediately after it is finished (or, when it's "fresh"). Allowing the cheese to age will give it time to develop its full flavor profile... however, if you are dying to taste your first cheese right away, try making two small wheels with your curds, rather than one medium wheel on your first go. That way, you can eat one right off the bat and leave the other one to age to perfection. That will also allow you to taste how the flavors develop and intensify (and get tastier!) if you have the patience to let it reach its full potential :)

This Appenzellar recipe is one of over 35 different styles of artisan cheese I make, and you can make the same recipes with any kind of milk you have available to you (though the results and yield will vary, due to the many variables present in the way milks are processed, stored, sourced, etc).

For this recipe (yield 1 medium size wheel or 2 small wheels, approx 1.2lb of cheese total either way):

1.5 gallons milk (raw milk, which is what I use, will yield plump curds as shown in the progress photos; store bought or homogenized & pasteurized milk will yield weaker "shredded-looking" curds and will not look like the photos, but should still allow you to finish a successful cheese or two)

1/8 tsp thermophilic cheese cultures

1/4 tsp liquid CaCl

1/4 tsp liquid rennet

Seasonings of your choice (red pepper flakes, black pepper, garlic powder - or other flavor profiles like rosemary, oregano, herbs de provence, etc)

Non-iodized salt (for making brine)

White vinegar (for making brine)

Measuring spoons

Measuring cups/small glasses or bowls

Medium mesh cheesecloth (#60 in cheesecloth terms)

10qt heavy bottomed pot with lid (stainless steel is best)

Slotted spoon

Large kitchen knife (10-12")

Large bowl

Accurate thermometer (I use the Tel Tru 12" thermometer with the pot clip)

1 medium or 2 small cheese molds with followers

Weights, or any objects you know the approximate weight of and can use to stack on the cheese for pressing

Cheese press (mine is homemade and a design I developed myself, but you can get creative with ways to stack weights on your cheese to get started - my first "cheese press" was a large can of raw honey that fit perfectly inside my basket mold, with textbooks from college stacked on top of the honey can. There are also many types of press available for purchase online)

Kitchen timer

1. Pour your milk into the heavy bottomed pot, and heat gently over your lowest heat setting - stirring continuously so the milk doesn't burn - til you reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. At 90 degrees Fahrenheit, turn off the heat and sprinkle 1/8 tsp of thermophilic cultures over the top of the milk. Let the culture sit on the surface for 5 minutes to rehydrate.
3. After 5 minutes, stir the cultures into the milk slowly but thoroughly for 20 seconds, then cover the pot and allow it to sit undisturbed for 1 hour. This will allow the cultures to "wake up" and begin populating throughout the milk.

1. Measure out 2 Tbsp non-chlorinated water in each of two small glasses/bowls. Add 1/4 tsp CaCl to one bowl of water and stir, and add 1/4 tsp liquid rennet to the other bowl of water and stir (do not confuse the two bowls - I usually leave the container of each ingredient next to its bowl until I'm ready to add them to the pot so I don't mix them up).
2. Stir the CaCl/water mixture into your milk for 20 seconds, then stir the rennet/water mixture into the milk for another 20 seconds. Let the milk come to a stop after stirring (you can use your spoon to slow it down until it is still).
3. Cover the pot and allow to sit undisturbed for 25 minutes.

1. After 25 minutes has passed, make sure your curd has formed properly. You do this by checking for a "clean break" in the curds. If you've made cheese before, you likely know what this means - although I've observed a lot of confusion from beginners regarding what this actually means or looks like. I'll try to explain... So, to check for a clean break, insert your kitchen knife about 1/2" deep into the milk, then tilt it slightly to the left or right. What you should observe, if the curd has formed correctly, is a clean-sided void that fills up rapidly with clearish whey (the liquid that starts to separate from the curds after you add rennet). The second photo in my series shows the "clean break" after the knife is removed... note the clean sides of the cut, and the yellowish clear whey that has filled up the void. That's what you want to see. If you see anything other than this - perhaps a mushy opening, or the liquid that fills your cut is very milky/opaque, then there was likely an issue with your milk (overly homogenized, poor quality, not fresh), or your CaCl and/or rennet are expired or of low quality, or the milk temp was too cool, or your milk needs more time to sit and let the rennet work. It's a tough thing to troubleshoot sometimes, if it doesn't work out... fingers crossed, your cut looks like the photos.
2. If you have achieved a clean break, make a series of cuts 3/8"-1/2" apart, from north to south in your pot, all the way down to the bottom of the pot and all the way across the entire pot, then do the same from west to east - creating a checkerboard looking pattern in the curd mass.
3. If you feel ambitious, do a third set of cuts to create "cubes" in the curd mass: you do this by tilting your knife at a 45 degree angle or as steep as you can, and cut in a spiral motion from the top of the pot all the way down to the bottom - picture your knife slicing all the tall vertical columns you just cut into cubes all the way down to the bottom of the pot. If that's too confusing, that's ok... just continue on and try it another time.
4. Once your curds are cut, allow them to sit quiet and "heal" for 5 minutes. You should notice them sink a little under the whey, which will start to pool over the top a bit.

1. Begin heating the curds over the lowest heat possible, stirring gently. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and slowly heat the curds to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, with the goal of hitting 115 degrees at the 25 minute mark. It will be necessary to turn the heat on and off over the course of the 25 minutes in order to ensure the target temperature is not reached too quickly.
2. As you heat and stir, use your spoon to slice any large curds that float into view into 1/2" x 1/2" cubes, so the curds maintain as close to the same size as possible. This is never perfect though, so don't let it worry you if you have a variety of different sized curds - just do your best. The curds will begin to firm up and shrink in size as you stir. This process of heating and stirring is called "cooking the curds."
3. At 25 minutes and 115 degrees, turn the heat off and allow the curds to settle below the whey. This is called "pitching the curds."

1. Once the curds have settled below the whey, pour off about 10% of the whey (in my case, I wanted to save a quart of whey to use for other things like soup stock and pasta sauce bases, so I set a quart jar underneath the pot and captured the whey to use later. Whey is very nutritious, and even if you don't want to consume it yourself, it makes a great tea to mix into your compost pile or a healthy liquid snack for chickens, pigs, etc).
2. Fill the pot with an amount of 115 degree water equal to the amount of whey you poured off. An easy way to make sure you use the same amount of water is to look for the ring of film on the side of the pot where the original level of curd and liquid was before you poured off the whey, and refill with water up to that line.
3. Put the pot back on the heat, and heat slowly back up to 115 while stirring (if the temperature dropped below that while you were pouring), and continue stirring the curds at 115 degrees for another 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, pitch the curds again.

1. Prepare whatever spice mixture you'd like to use.
2. Pour off the whey/water liquid until you can see the curds at the bottom. Slowly pour off as much whey as you possibly can without losing any curds in the sink - you can place a clean hand on the curds to keep them from sliding out of the pot.
3. Using your hands, gently mix your spices into the curds thoroughly and evenly.
4. Scoop handfuls of curds into your cheese mold lined with clean cheesecloth. If you are using more than one mold, try to scoop an even amount of curds into each mold. You can do this accurately by using a kitchen scale to weigh the curds, but as you gain experience you will eventually be able to eyeball it pretty evenly.

1. Place the followers inside the molds on top of the curds. Gently pull the cheesecloth up, all around the edge of the curds, so there are no wrinkles or folds down inside the mold.
2. If the followers are too deep down in the molds for your press or weights to reach them, use a spacer like the pint glasses in my photos, to raise the height of the follower so you can put pressure on them.
3. Press the cheeses at a weight of 10-15lbs pressure per cheese, for 25 minutes. In this case, since I was making two cheeses, I added two 10lb weights to the press, so each cheese was receiving 10lbs of pressure.
4. After 25 minutes, remove the weights, and unwrap the cheeses from the cheesecloth. You may see a ring of cheese that has squished out from around the edge of your followers - that's fine, just use a sharp knife and trim it off. I usually treat myself to this bonus "cheese ring" as a rewarding snack for all my hard work up to this point :)

1. Once you have trimmed the cheese (if needed), flip the cheese over, and redress the cheese with the cheesecloth and place it back in the mold (the cheese should now be upside down inside the mold from what it was before).
2. Tug the cheesecloth gently to remove wrinkles like before, replace the followers on top, as well as the "spacer" glasses.
3. Press the cheeses at an increased weight of 20-25lb per cheese, and let them press for a full 8 hours. As you can see in the photo, I now have two 10lb weights per cheese sitting on the press.
4. After 8 hours, once again remove the weights and unwrap the cheeses. They will probably have another "squish ring" around the top - repeat the process of trimming it off, and treat yourself to another snack :)

1. Prepare a saturated brine for salting this cheese. A saturated brine is basically a saltwater mixture that is so salty, no more salt can possibly be dissolved in it. To make your saturated brine, use 1 gallon of cold non-chlorinated and filtered water, and add 1 tsp white vinegar, 1 tsp CaCl, and several pounds of non-iodized salt (or, enough salt so that as you stir the salt in, you keep adding salt until you start noticing that the salt is no longer dissolving and is just spinning around on the bottom of the jar or bowl). The more salt the better.

**You can reuse your brine over and over indefinitely, as long as you store it in a clean, closed jar in the fridge between uses. I've toured many cheese caves in local dairies around my state, and they've used the same vats of brine for years and years, kind of like a sourdough mother or kombucha mother. In order to reuse your brine, make sure you first add 1/2 tsp white vinegar and 1/2 tsp CaCl to the brine to readjust the pH levels and replenish the calcium content, as well as adding enough salt that it becomes saturated again (will no longer dissolve salt). Every time you brine a cheese, the cheese absorbs these ingredients out of the brine, so it's important to replenish them before you brine a new cheese.

1. Pour the saturated brine into a large enough vessel that your cheeses can float in it without touching each other. If you've made the brine properly, the salt should be sufficient to allow the cheeses to float. If your cheeses sink, the brine needs more salt.
2. Place the brine bowl into a 55 degree Fahrenheit location (I use my fridge) where they can float undisturbed for 8 hours. Shake a bit of salt on the top of each cheese when you first place the bowl in the fridge (or whatever cold area you're using), so the top that's floating out of the brine water can also absorb some salt. After 4 hours, flip the cheeses over in the brine, and salt the new floating surface in the same way.
3. After 8 hours in the brine, remove the cheeses and blot them dry gently with a clean paper towel. Place them on a clean surface, preferably with a perforated mat underneath to allow them to drain off moisture, and let them air dry for 2 days - flipping them once or twice a day (I flip mine in the morning before I go to work, and again at night before I go to bed).
4. Once the surface of the cheese is no longer releasing moisture, it is ready to age. I recommend aging for a minimum of three months in a 52 degree Fahrenheit environment (or, if you are impatient to try it right away, it can be sampled now - but be aware the flavor will develop much more if you allow it to age).

**Traditional Appenzeller cheeses are washed daily with an herb bath to promote rind development throughout the entire aging process. Although I have done this many times over the years to achieve that delicious funky-smelling rind beloved by strong cheese lovers, I no longer have the time necessary to babysit this cheese so closely, now that my farm has become a second full-time job. Instead, I vacuum seal this cheese once the surface has dried off (following the previous step 4), saving me the daily chore of cleaning/washing/rubbing/drying the rind. And while the rind will not develop the delightful funk Appenzeller is known for when it's vacuum sealed, it will still age beautifully, and I find the cheese is still irresistibly delicious, soft yet firm in texture, and mild yet powerfully flavored - easily enjoyable by simple and refined palates alike.