Feelin\' Cheesy

Apple for smoking.

I'd like to try maple, too, but I don't have any in my stash. We'd had maple-smoked horseradish cheddar at the Vermont Country Store this past summer and it was darned tasty, as was the maple/hickory smoked American from Sugarbush Farm, hence the experiment there.

We also had made a pizza over the summer with some smoked fresh mozzarella we picked up at Co-Op in New Hampshire and since I got the cheesemaking kit for Christmas, I wanted to see how home-made, home-smoked mozzarella would turn out. The stuff I bought at Kroger (I forget the brand), was awful compared to the NH stuff.

Brian,

I follow the instructions on the Naked Whiz' site. There's not much heat since the fire source is 6 plain charcoal briquettes topped with some slices of smoking wood).

Lower vent is open about 1/2 inch, daisy top has the large disk closed and the small petal ring open maybe 1/4 of the way. Then there's the big pan of ice below the cheese (it sits on the legs-up platesetter).

Yesterday was 65 out and the dome thermometer stayed below 50 the whole time. I think the critical temperature is to stay below 70-100 in the dome, so I don't do cheese if it's more than 70 out.

Each batch was on for 1 hour total (and that was the same original 6 briquettes and apple wood slices). After the first batch came out I just flipped the apple over (since the smoke had decreased from when I'd put that first batch on). I did this right after my friends' cheese came off and I left the daisy off (Egg lid closed, though) while I loaded the racks with my cheese. That was enough airflow to start the apple smoking again.

Beli,

To be honest, when there are that many bricks of cheese, they get mixed up during the vacuum packing and the resting/mellowing in the fridge so I don't know if there's a significant difference or not. You can definitely see a color difference between the underside and the top side of each brick - the smoke is condensing on the cheese. This was particularly noticeable on the mozzarella since it was so white in color (originally). Now what was the top side is a pale coffee color.

I do know that one time doing a single "run", I tried the "more smokey" method of flipping the smoking wood over at the 1/2 hour mark, and the cheese was a little too smokey for our taste. The way the smoke slowly decreases if you leave the wood undisturbed for the hour works well for us.

I'm glad I'd read on the forum that you need to let the cheese mellow for a while before eating (I do 2 weeks because on the first batch I found the flavor continued to improve for the first 2 weeks staying in vacuum packs). If you taste the cheese right off the egg, it's got a very strong, unpleasant raw smoke flavor that's overwhelming. I think the vacuum pack helps the smoke diffuse into the cheese and evens out the smoke.