How to Make Hard Cheese (flexible homestead hard cheese recipe)

The cheese I make the most often doesn’t really have a name. It turns out a different cheese at different times of year, but making it is always the same process. When I’m asked what cheese I’m making, I often just reply “hard cheese”. We are on a homestead, this is a basic staple hard cheese that is easy to make and feeds us, so I’ll call it “homestead hard cheese” for now.

Most cheese recipes have exact timings written down, but in this one I’m going to be inexact, sharing how to make hard cheese as a part of day-to-day life, without stressing or watching the clock. Many cheese recipes also call for a specialist cheese press, but this recipe works really well without a cheese press – all you need to press it is a jar filled with water. You can use any kind of raw milk for this cheese: cows milk, goats milk, or sheeps milk.

You’ll get slightly different results each time you make this, depending on your room temperature, and how long you allow between each stage, but the most important thing about this cheese is to make it in a way that works for your life.

This is a long post, not because making hard cheese is complicated or difficult, but because I want to show you just how flexible this recipe can be with timing, batch sizes, and aging. I am trying to keep this post as short as I can, while still giving you enough detail to confidently make and age your own hard cheeses. In my cheesemaking book I discuss all these things in much greater detail.

The benefits of this hard cheese recipe

This cheese uses some of the methods of Swiss cheeses and other Alpine cheeses to create several cheeses in one:

• When made in summer from low fat summer goat milk or semi-skimmed cow milk, it turns out similar to a typical small batch Swiss cheese or Jarlsberg: minimal mould, mild taste, and more eyes (holes) throughout the cheese interior.
• When made in cooler, damper conditions, the rind gets some white and blue moulds.
• When made from creamy winter goat milk, sheep milk, or full fat cows milk, the interior of the cheese is softer and creamier than the summer version, (yet still definitely a hard cheese).
• The relatively fast fermentation results in leftover whey that isn’t sour and makes the best gjetost.
• The whey ricotta you get from this cheese is so lovely and delicate. You can either keep it in the whey you reduce for gjetost, or you can scoop it out and enjoy it on its own, or in recipes, before reducing the rest of the whey for gjetost or feeding it to the chickens.

This is a cheese that doesn’t need a cheese press, the timing is flexible, and because most of the culturing happens during the lengthy pressing time, the actual hands-on making of the cheese is fast. The hands-on cheesemaking tasks can be lumped together into 2 short bursts when you’re in the kitchen doing other things anyway, so that you don’t have to watch the clock worrying about whether it’s time to do the next stage or not when you’re away from the kitchen.

How to make hard cheesemaking work in real life conditions

Cheesemaking can be divided into hands-on time and hands-off time. One of the keys to making hard cheese work in real life is to figure out ways to make the hands-on time be time when you’re in the kitchen anyway.

This cheese is typical of many cheese recipes. There’s a brief hands-on time when you are heating the milk to culturing temperature, then the coagulating time is hands-off. The next burst of hands-on time is a bit longer, where you’ll be stirring the cheese and heating it, so you’ll need to be around to keep an eye on it and stir every now and then.

Many cheese recipes involve culturing, and then coagulating, and then stirring. This recipe combines the culturing and coagulating to make a mild, milky cheese, with less clock-watching involved.

If you look at your day, and the times when you are naturally in the kitchen anyway, you might do the first hands-on time for this recipe when you are coming into the kitchen to cook a meal. The second bit of hands-on time could be done either while you are cooking, or after you have eaten (depending on how long the meal takes to cook). If you allow the combined culturing and coagulation to go on for too long, shorten the stirring time. If your coagulating time has been short, take a little longer with stirring.

The key to remember with any kind of fermentation, including cheese, is that you can look at all the steps together as “total fermentation time”, and adjust recipe timings to work with your schedule. The beauty of this particular recipe is that much of the fermentation is happening while the cheese is pressing, which means there’s less time spent standing over a pot, and more time to enjoy eating homemade cheese.

Equipment for making hard cheese

Stainless steel pot with lid

Cheese thermometer
You can make cheese without a thermometer and measure temperature by hand, which I discuss in detail in my cheesemaking book, but for more accurate results, having a dairy thermometer is recommended, especially if you are new to making hard cheese. This is what I use.

Slotted spoon
You can do without this if you want, but it does make adding rennet and stirring curds slightly easier.

Large balloon whisk
This is used for cutting the curds into small pieces. If you don’t have one of these, you can also just use a long kitchen knife and cut the cheese into small cubes, like you would for mozzarella, but I really like using a large whisk because it is really quick and easy to cut the curds up into the small size needed for this cheese recipe.

Cheesecloth
I use the same organic cotton cheesecloth that I use for my other cheeses, but any kind of tightly woven cheesecloth or butter muslin will work for this recipe.

Cheese mould with follower
A cheese mould (also called a cheese form, or cheese basket) is the most specialist piece of gear you will need for making hard cheese, but if taken care of, it will last a long time and reward you with many wheels of delicious hard cheese. You can also use it for feta or halloumi, and depending on the size, you could also use it for camembert, brie, or aged chèvre.

For best results, a cheese mould should be the right size for the cheese you are making (too big, and you’ll make a thin wheel, too small and your curds won’t fit in it). It should be taller than it is wide, so that it can shrink down while it’s pressing whey. Many of the hard cheese moulds for sale online will produce thin wheels that won’t age well, so I’ll go into detail here a bit more about what I use, and what I recommend.

I really like my 800g cheese mould, but it seems to be hard to find one of these now. It measures 12cm (4 3/4”) wide and 13.5cm (5 1/4”) high. I use this for winter goat milk cheese or sheep milk cheese made from as little as 3 litres (3 quarts) of milk, and for summer goat milk cheeses made from between 6 and 10 litres (1 1/2 to 2 1/2 gallons) of milk.

This set of three moulds is a good option for small batch cheeses – the largest of these is slightly bigger than my one and would be suited to around 12 litres (3 gallons) of milk, and the smaller ones would work well for cheeses made from around 4 litres (1 gallon) of milk.

For batches of cheese made from around 20 litres (5 gallons) of milk, you can make your own cheese mould out of a 2 litre yoghurt bucket or any small straight-sided bucket by drilling lots of holes into the base and sides.

A follower is a piece of plastic or wood that sits snugly inside your cheese mould, and then gets pressed down on top of your cheese. You can easily make your own one by cutting down some yoghurt bucket lids, or cutting a piece of wood to the right size.

A jar full of water that will fit in your form, for pressing the cheese
Anything that will fit inside your cheese mould is fine – I use a tomato passata (sauce) jar or a canning jar filled with water.

A large bowl to catch the whey
Whey is precious and can be used to make bonus cheeses, which I’ll discuss below.

Recipe: flexible homestead hard cheese

1. Milk your animals, strain the milk, and bring it indoors. Don’t bother to cool it down, just bring whatever you will need for cheesemaking into the kitchen.

2. When you’re in the kitchen doing other things, decide on your batch size and get your cheesemaking gear and ingredients ready:

• Optionally sterilise a stainless steel pot, cheese thermometer, and slotted spoon by putting an inch of water in the base of the pot, hooking the thermometer over the lip of the pot, putting the slotted spoon inside and the lid on and bringing it to a rolling boil. Once it’s boiling, tilt it around to coat the surface of the pot all with boiling water, then tip the water out into a small bowl with a spoon in it, which you’ll use later for diluting rennet.
• Decide whether you are adding any culture or not: if your kitchen is warm and your milk has been resting for a few hours, you may not need any culture: the raw milk will do it for you. If you do want to add culture, for every 1 litre (1 quart) milk, add 1 tablespoon yoghurt, kefir, clabber, or fresh leftover whey.
• Put the milk and optional culture in your pot, put the lid on, and heat it on the stove over a very low heat, making sure you are nearby to check on it often, until it reaches around 32ºC (90ºF). Remove from the heat. 

3. Add rennet to your heated and cultured milk

• Once the pot is still, remove the boiling water from your rennet diluting bowl, add a small amount of filtered water, and dilute a standard dose of rennet for your batch size in this water: the larger your batch, the more water you need – for a 1 to 2 gallon batch of cheese I use around 1/4 cup water.
• Pour the diluted rennet through a slotted spoon onto the milk and stir with the spoon in an up and down motion for around one minute for goats and sheep milk, or two to three minutes for cows milk.
• Leave the pot alone and don’t move it until the rennet has set.

4. Check for coagulation and cut curds

• For best results, start checking on the pot for coagulation after around 15 to 30 minutes, but if you are not around the kitchen it won’t hurt if you leave it alone for an hour.
• Once the curd has set, use a large balloon whisk to cut it into small curds of around the same size. 

5. Stir and heat curds

• Leave the pot to rest for 5 minutes (or slightly longer, if you’re not in the kitchen), for the curds to begin firming up, then move it to stove on a very very low heat.
• If your curds have been sitting around for a while off the heat, you can have it on the stove the whole time of heating. If you’ve only just cut them, you will want to heat them very slowly at first, taking the pot on and off the heat as you need to.
• The goal end temperature for this cheese is anywhere between 43ºC (110ºF) and 46ºC (115ºF).
• Stir gently every now and then while heating to prevent the curds from clumping together.
• As you are stirring and heating, you will notice the curds shrinking and starting to firm up. Test them for readiness by taking half a handful, squashing it between your hands, and then opening your hands – if they seem strong and stick to one hand briefly when you turn it upside down, they are ready. If you’re at the goal temperature, you can take them off the heat now, if not, try to get to the goal temperature quickly while stirring.

6. Drain and press cheese

• Optionally sterilise your cheesecloth by boiling it in a small pot of water. Tip the boiling water all over your cheese mould and a bowl large enough to contain your whey, then drain.
• Arrange the cheesecloth inside the cheese mould, with the edges hanging over the top. Gently pour whey from your pot all over the cheesecloth, then pour the remaining curds and whey into the lined cheese mould. Settle the curds down into an even layer, fold the edges of the cheesecloth over the top, avoiding bunching it up, place the follower, and jar full of water on top, then place on the draining board of your sink.
• Now don’t throw out your whey! At the end of the recipe I’ll show how you can make a bonus cheese or two out of this.

7. Flip cheese

• After anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour (but preferably 10 to 30 minutes), gently remove the cheese from the mould and cloth, flip it over, rewrap in the cloth so that the old top is now in the bottom of the cloth, place the cheese back in the mould, fold the cloth back over the top, add the follower, and then the weight. 
• Leave the weight on for 12 to 18 hours, then remove the cheese from the cloth.

8. Salt the cheese

• Sprinkle your cheese all over with salt (1 tablespoon per gallon of milk used, or slightly more if you’re using sheep milk or winter goat milk, or slightly less if you’re using low fat summer milk and your cheese yield is low).
• Place the cheese on a plate to catch any whey that drips out and move it to a cool-ish place with plenty of airflow (between 8ºC and 20ºC (46ºF to 68ºF) is best).
• The next day, drain any whey that has come out of the cheese, flip it over, and continue to drain it on a plate in that cool-ish airy place for another 24 hours or so.

9. Now it’s time to age your cheese…

How to age hard cheese without a cheese cave

The conditions that you age this cheese in have a huge effect on it.

Ideally, you want the humidity to be quite high and the temperature quite low and stable, and for there to be some airflow. 

The ideal temperature range for aging cheese is between 8ºC (46ºF) and 15ºC (59ºF), but you can get away with aging this cheese at up to 20ºC (68ºF). I discuss cheese aging more fully in my book. Here are some options:

• An unheated room in your house with a window ajar (with flyscreen over it) for airflow. Test the temperature of various rooms in your house with a fridge thermometer and you might find the perfect place for it.
• A cellar
• An old meat safe kept in crawlspace of your house, a shady porch, or some other cool, shady, non-freezing spot.
• A wine fridge, or a fridge with a modified thermostat, with a wet towel in it. Set it to around 13ºC (55ºF).

The temperature and humidity of cheese ageing will impact the kind of rind and texture you get to your cheese, so if you prefer a Swiss-style cheese with lots of eyes, you can encourage this by aging it a bit warmer (20ºC (68ºF)). If you want less moulds, age with less humidity (but you still definitely need some humidity, otherwise the cheese can dry out too much and crack). 

With all cheeses I like to just work with what nature provides: in my climate we have dry summers and damp winters, so I get less mould and more eyes in summer, more mould and less eyes in winter. I make this same recipe year-round, and it tastes like two completely different cheeses depending on the aging temperature and humidity.

How to care for hard cheese while it is aging

In the early stages of cheese aging, you will want to flip and move you cheese to a dry bit of wood every few days. At some stage, if the humidity is high enough, your cheese will start to get moulds. If the moulds seem excessively furry, you can pat them down or rub them off with some cheese cloth, but mostly, if you’ve salted your cheese well and your aging conditions are good, you’ll get nice white and blue moulds, which don’t need much attention.

When is my hard cheese ready?

The size of your cheese will determine how long it takes to age. For a small cheese (between 1 and 2 gallons of milk), it will be ready after around four to six weeks, or you can leave it aging for several months. For a larger cheese, you’ll want to leave it at least 2 months or longer, depending on the size of the cheese.

The longer you leave a cheese aging, the more it dries out, and the more complex its flavour becomes: if you prefer mild cheeses, eat it earlier, if you prefer more complex, parmesan-like cheeses, leave it longer. 

Cheese will age more quickly at higher temperatures, slower in colder temperatures. In summer, once your cheese has dried out and aged enough to be tasty and edible, you can wrap it in baking paper, followed by a tight layer of foil, or an airtight container, and move it to the fridge, where it can continue aging more slowly until you’re ready to eat it.

What to do with leftover whey

The leftover whey from this cheese is so sweet and mild, and makes the best gjetost and ricotta.

To make ricotta: Heat the whey up on the stove until almost boiling, and the ricotta curds will form on top. Skim them off and eat them as-is, or use them in recipes

To make gjetost: You can either make gjetost from whey with ricotta removed, or with the ricotta left in. Yields are higher with the ricotta left in.

To make gjetost, allow your pot of whey to boil with the lid off until it’s reduced by half or more. Keep boiling, stirring every now and then, until it starts to thicken, then add some milk or cream, and continue to stir. The thicker it gets, the lower the temperature it needs, or the more stirring it needs, just keep heating and stirring until it passes the ‘jam test’ and tastes delicious.

Making gjetost on a conventional gas or electric stove is very energy-intensive, but you can use a slow cooker like Leigh Tate does, or a wood stove or wood heater.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much milk do I need to make hard cheese?

The amount of milk you’ll need to make hard cheese will depend on the size of your cheese form. For my 800g cheese form, I use anywhere between 3 litres (3 quarts) of winter goat milk or sheep milk and 10 litres of summer goat milk.

The key to making hard cheese from any amount of milk is to know exactly how much rennet and culture to add to your milk, see my post about scaling cheese recipes for more details.

Do I need to sterilise everything with boiling water for making hard cheese?

I do in the early stages of the recipe, just as an extra precaution against unwanted stuff getting into my cheese, but plenty of cheesemakers don’t do this, so it’s completely up to you.

For natural rind cheese aging, the aging happens on wooden surfaces which do not get sterilised, but can be cleaned with salt and water.

Can I make hard cheese with milk that’s been stored in the fridge or freezer?

You can, but the yield will be lower, and the quality not as good.

Can I make hard cheese with milk from the grocery store?

If you can find high quality raw milk, or non-homogenised low-temperature pasteurised milk, then you can make this hard cheese recipe. For best results, make cheese from the milk when it is as fresh as possible.

Do I need a cheese press to make hard cheese?

No. The purpose of pressing a cheese is to get the curds to knit together. If your curds are very dry, like for Cheddar, then you’ll probably want a cheese press, but for most hard cheeses like this one, you can get away with using a jar of water or some other weight to press the cheese.

What do I do if the curd has stuck to the cheesecloth?

Next time make sure that the cheesecloth is cool before you add your curds, and also pour the whey over the cheesecloth to change the acidity of it before you add the curds.

If you’ve let cheesemaking go on for too long, it could also be that it’s become too acidic and you’ve accidentally made cultured mozzarella! You can test for this by taking a small amount of curd, putting it on a hot frying pan, and once heated, seeing if it stretches. 

If you want to avoid accidental mozzarella, next time, use your milk earlier in the day (or keep it in a slightly cooler (but not fridge) place), use less culture, and shorten the coagulation and stirring times.

What kind of rennet do I need for making hard cheese?

I recommend using animal rennet, such as Walcoren. If you can’t get animal rennet, microbial rennet is another GMO-free choice that will work for this recipe.