It started so well:

I followed Ms. Karlin’s recipe, but after the recommended 4 weeks, they were still really solid, not soft at all, as expected, so they went back into the vault for another month.

Then soft-ish. Dryer rind than I would like.

But looks promising:

However, nasty and bitter taste. I think I know where the bitter taste came from. Pasteurizing/homogenizing removes much of the Calcium Chloride from raw milk, which means it’s more difficult to get good solid curd, so you have to replace the CaCl. When I first started making cheeses, I used a commercial CaCl solution, but it’s ridiculously expensive, so I started to use “pickling spice” (pure, dry CaCl), and somehow even basic chemistry deserted me and I was using e.g. 1/2 teaspoon pickling spice instead of 1/2 teaspoon 32% CaCl solution.

And I should stop waiting for the advised “softness” and just start eating when they’re good!

Not yum,

-R