An Obsession with Cheddar

This is going to happen. I am bound and determined to make a decent cheddar.

Who knew cheddar would be so tricky? My previous attempts have come out so dry and crumbly, that they aren't even tasty. I've come to learn this is probably because of too much acid production.

I tried to compensate and ended up leaving too much moisture in my curd which led to them not aging properly. 

I am now armed with a pH meter and a growing understanding of what I am doing. These pictures are of two of my attempts from this week.

The cheese pictured above is a stirred curd recipe called "Twelfth Night". I am going to dress it up with some black wax today. I feel really good about how everything turned out with it. My only concern is that the pH seemed to drop a bit more than I wanted it to while stirring the curd. 

The cheese below is the goat milk cheddar recipe from "200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes". I'm afraid I dried the curd out too much on this one- cut it too small, stirred it too long, etc. The pH readings seemed okay, but I'm afraid it's going to be a dry cheese.

Today I am going to try a milled curd cheddar. We'll see how it goes!