Make Esrom Cheese

Here’s my first attempt at Esrom cheese. It’s a trappist-style cheese that should turn out creamy/semisoft… but not as far as brie or camembert. Named after an abbey of monks around the 12th century, it’s a washed rind cheese. What’s interesting is that we often don’t press a softer cheese, but rather let it sink into the mould. This one, however, gets pressed with increasing weight all the way up to 75 lbs. These are usually hard cheese weights. How we prepare the curd and stifle the acid development, we retain a lot of moisture. Even after pressing, the wheel is pretty pliable and needs to be handled delicately. It’s brined after pressing and before air-drying for a few days. The next regimen will take special attention to caring for the rind. It needs to be flipped twice a day and I’ll do the first wash when I see the geo tric kicking in. I’m bound to have unwanted molds start and that’s where it’ll take repeated washes to get that off and let the white and red molds kick in. See more info on pics.

If you want to try to make this cheese, here is a link to the recipe I used from Jim Wallace at Cheesemaking.com.

For cheesemaking, I now use the Anova immersion circulator and I don’t know what I’d do without it. You can really control the temperature, including holding the same temperature for as long as you need, and also manage the ramping of temperatures needed in most cheesemaking. If you’re really a techie, here’s the Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker w WI-FI and Bluetooth, the same unit, but has Wifi.