Processing variations for different Gouda varieties

Meyer Gouda Cheese produces a range of traditional Gouda cheeses, including mild, aged and flavoured varieties. Creating the typical characteristics of the different varieties involves variations in the cheesemaking process. Here, Miel Meyer explains some of the critical processing operations that impact on specific characteristics of Gouda cheese, such as texture.

Teaching points:

This video could be used as a lead-in to teaching the science of cheesemaking and/or developing understanding of how different cheese characteristics are produced. See the articles: The science of cheese, Creating different cheese characteristics and the animation: Cheese: a molecular view. Try the teaching activities Identifying cheese characteristics and Separating curds and whey.

Transcript

Miel Meyer (Meyer Gouda Cheese)
With different types of Gouda, the size of the curd’s quite critical, so aged Gouda, you want a really, really small curd – that way, the surface area to volume ratio is more and then more whey can get released, and you reduce the amount of moisture in the curds. With a larger curd, then there’s less surface area to volume ratio, so then you end up with less moisture being released and you end up with a milder more creamy cheese.

So for a mild cheese, I leave the curds reasonably big, say the size of a bean or a pea. When you’re making a really aged cheese – because we want to age it for 2 or 3 years – you want to make it really, really small, so sort of a quarter of a pea, or that’s how we describe it. You need to relate to something to be able to gauge what size it is.

If we’re making a herbed Gouda, such as a flavoured garlic and chives or cumin, then we generally stop the maturing process of the curds slightly earlier, so we can mix in the herbs. During that mixing process, the curds are still drying out, so the maturing process is still continuing, and once we’ve finished mixing, it would be at the same stage as a non-herbed Gouda.