Cheese the Fifth: Farmhouse Cheddar

The Cheese: Farmhouse Cheddar (Carroll p. 104)
The Milk: 1 gallon 365 whole milk (not organic, not explicitly non-ultrapasturized on the label)
The Starter: 1 packet direct set mesophilic
The Rennet: 1/4 tsp animal rennet

Farmhouse Cheddar is the first hard cheese I attempted. That is 'hard' meaning texture. While Farmhouse Cheddar is an order of magnitude more difficult to make than anything I've tried to date, it is supposed to be one of the easiest of the hard cheese. Part of that may be that despite the name it isn't actually cheddared.

The first problem I ran into was that the recipe called for 2 gallons, but my pot turns out to have a capacity of only a little over 1.5 gallons. Of course, I didn't realize this until I bought the milk.
Fine. Cheese the Sixth will be Farmhouse Cheddar as well.

The second difficulty was in getting a clean break. I just wasn't sure the curds had set as well as they should. I was unsure about how I cut the curds, as well. I tried to cut them into regular cubes, but I'm not the greatest at cutting in straight lines.

That was a minor problem, but cooking the curds was more severe. The curds are supposed to go from 90 degrees to 100 degrees over a half hour period, with no more than a 2 degree increase over a five minute period. I think they went from 90 to 100 in a five minute period.
Not good.

I continued to have issues with the press as well. I'm still looking for a solution for the follower, or at least for something to keep the top of the cheese nice and neat.

After air drying it for 4 days, I waxed it on March 1, 2009. I'm only planning on aging it for 3 weeks.

March 27, 2009
I first tried it on March 21. It's definately sharp, and might be an acquired taste.
A few days later I put it on cheese burgers. It didn't melt on the grill like commercial cheddar, but it was still pretty good. I'd say it's similar to putting blue cheese on a burger.
It didn't melt in the microwave either, but lost it's shape and puffed up a bit.