- Dec 17, 2015
- 9
- 14
Figured I'd post my first cheese smoke. I'm new to smoking and this forum has helped a ton.
I used royal oak lump with cherry wood on a vertical smoker. I used ice water to control the temp. My temp ranged right around 70 but it did spike a couple times up to 100. I smoked all the cheese for 2 hours. No problems with melting cheese thankfully.
For this smoke I wanted some variety to figure out what I like. I did several blocks of cheddar, colby, swiss and gouda. I also used different brands ranging in quality to see if cheap stuff turned out as good as the pricier stuff.
For the cheap brands I used generic Winco cheddar and colby. After aging for a couple days they sucked. After a week they were much better. Well worth the effort.
The swiss turned out ok, but I don't like swiss in the first place.
For a mid grade I tried tillamook cheddar. Awesome. Worth the extra money. After only two days of aging it was tasty and getting better with each week.
Finally the high grade I bought some kerrygold aged cheddar. WOW. That stuff is awesome. That being said it tasted great before I smoked it.
After all that I decided it's probably better to go for cheaper/mid grade cheese and age them longer to get that bang for your buck.
Any tips on cheese, specifically aging would be appreciated. After cooling to room temp, I just tossed them in ziplock bags in the fridge.
Thanks