Making Semi-Soft Washed-Curd Cheese
Gouda, Edam, Havarti, Colby, Monterey Jack, Muenster, Leyden. Mild, elastic, sweet, and the best melters in the section.
The family page says what they are. This is the make, and it turns on one step that takes ten minutes and decides everything.
The one thing: you take the food away from your own bacteria
Your starter culture eats lactose and produces lactic acid. Left alone in a vat, it will keep eating until it runs out or until the acid stops it, and the cheese ends up wherever that lands — which for a cheddar is around pH 5.0–5.2.
Washing the curd interrupts that. You drain off a portion of the whey and replace it with water, which dilutes the lactose still dissolved among the curds. Less sugar means less acid, and the cheese finishes higher, around pH 5.2–5.4.
That two-tenths of a pH point is the entire family:
| Cheddar | Washed curd | |
|---|---|---|
| Final pH | ~5.0–5.2 | ~5.2–5.4 |
| Calcium left in the network | Less | More |
| Texture | Firm, close, breaks | Elastic, supple, bends |
| Flavour | Sharp, tangy | Sweet, nutty, mild |
| Melting | Good | Excellent |
The calcium column is the mechanism, and it comes straight off the melting page: higher pH leaves more calcium bound into the casein network, and more bound calcium is what makes a gouda bend instead of snap.
⭐ And the wash does a second job at the same time, which is the elegant part: the water goes in hot, so it raises the vat temperature and cooks the curd in the same operation. One step, two outcomes.
The make, step by step
1. Milk and culture. A gallon at 86–88 °F / 30–31 °C, mesophilic culture, 45 minutes to ripen. Calcium chloride for shop milk. Annatto if you want the orange colour — which is a matter of habit rather than flavour.
2. Rennet, floc multiplier 3. A firm, clean set.
3. Cut to ⅜–½ inch. Rest 5 minutes, then stir gently for 30 minutes at the set temperature. The curd should shrink noticeably and firm up.
4. The wash. Let the curd settle, then draw off about a third of the whey — enough to expose the curd surface — and replace it with water at about 140 °F / 60 °C, poured in slowly while stirring, until the vat reaches 96–102 °F / 36–39 °C.
For a stronger wash, do it twice: draw off a third, add water, stir, then draw off again and add more. More washing, milder and sweeter cheese.
5. Stir another 20–30 minutes at the new temperature. The curd should be springy and squeak slightly between your teeth.
6. Drain — and for a gouda-style, drain under the whey. Let the curd settle into a mass at the bottom of the pot with the whey still over it, press it down with your hands or a plate, and then gather it. ⭐ Working the curd under liquid is how you keep air out of it, and air trapped between curd pieces is what becomes a mechanical opening — a slit or a crack in the finished paste that has nothing to do with gas and everything to do with sloppy draining.
7. Mould and press. Into a straight-sided mould with a follower. A staged schedule:
- ~5 PSI for 30 minutes, then unwrap, flip, redress
- ~10 PSI for 2 hours, flip and redress again
- ~15–20 PSI for 8–12 hours
Those are pressures on the follower, not weights on a lever — the arithmetic between the two is on the presses page, and it’s the single most-mangled number in home cheesemaking.
8. Brine. Saturated brine, with calcium chloride in it, at cave temperature. A rule of thumb is several hours per pound — a 2 lb wheel wants most of a day. Flip it partway, because a floating wheel’s top face gets no salt at all.
9. Dry, then coat. Air-dry until the surface is dry to the touch — days, not hours — then wax, vacuum-bag or apply a cheese coating. ⚠ Dry it properly first. Wax over a damp rind seals a mould farm inside, which is the point the rind page makes and the mistake everybody makes once.
10. Age at 50–55 °F / 10–13 °C. Two months is a young gouda and already good. Six months is better. A year is a different cheese with crunchy tyrosine crystals in it.
What “right” looks like
A supple, bendy paste. Cut a slice and bend it: a washed-curd cheese folds, a cheddar cracks. That is the pH point above, made visible in your hand.
Sweet on the palate, not sharp. If a young gouda-style tastes tangy, you didn’t wash enough.
A close, blind paste — no holes. Small round eyes in a young gouda are usually gas from something you didn’t invite, not a feature.
What goes wrong
It came out sharp and crumbly, like a bad cheddar. Under-washed, or the curd sat too long before the wash while the culture kept working.
Bitter. Excess rennet is the first suspect, an over-proteolytic culture the second.
Slits and cracks in the paste. Mechanical openings from air trapped at draining. Drain under the whey and press the curd together before it goes in the mould.
Round eyes, and a wheel that swells. Gas. Coliforms early, or Clostridium later — the late-blow defect. That’s a milk-quality and hygiene question rather than a technique one; see sanitation and safety.
Mould under the wax. Surface wasn’t dry. Cut it off, re-dry, re-wax; it’s usually recoverable.
The members, and what changes
Gouda. The archetype. Note that Boerenkaas — farmhouse gouda under its TSG — requires raw milk, which is the exact inverse of Stilton’s PDO forbidding it, under the same body of law in the same decades. The Netherlands page has that argument.
Edam. Part-skim, so lower fat, firmer and drier. The reduced fat is why it keeps and travels, and why it was the cheese of ships.
Havarti. Washed more, drained less, higher moisture — and traditionally made with a longer, gentler stir that leaves the small irregular openings it’s known for.
Colby. ⭐ The instructive one. It looks like cheddar, it’s often sold beside cheddar, and it is made by this family’s method — the curd is washed, with cold water, which raises moisture as well as diluting lactose. It’s the clearest possible demonstration that the wash defines the family, not the shape or the colour.
Monterey Jack. American, washed, mild, and the base for pepper jack and the flavoured versions.
Muenster (American). Mild, pressed, with a paprika-annatto coat. ⚠ Not the Alsatian Munster, which is a washed rind and an entirely different eating experience under almost the same word.
Leyden. Gouda-style with cumin seed worked into the curd, and one of the oldest documented spiced cheeses in Europe.
Where I stand
I haven’t made a gouda. My aged work has gone into the cheddars, which is the neighbouring family and — as this page argues — separated from it by one ten-minute step.
Which is, honestly, an argument for making one. Everything I already own does this: the press, the moulds, the brine, the cave. The only new thing is a kettle of hot water and the decision to use it.
The formulas
All seven are written:
- Cheese, Gouda — the archetype, and the one carrying 🔴 Boerenkaas, the protected name that REQUIRES raw milk — the exact inverse of Stilton’s PDO forbidding it
- Cheese, Edam — leaner because lean travelled. The red wax is largely an export convention that became identity
- Cheese, Havarti-Style — ⭐⭐ the protection that ran backwards: a name in worldwide industrial use for decades, granted an EU PGI in 2019 anyway
- Cheese, Colby — ⭐⭐ the most instructive cheese here. It looks like cheddar, is sold beside cheddar, and is made by this family’s method — washed with cold water, which drops the vat where a gouda’s hot wash raises it
- Cheese, Monterey Jack — 🔴 named after the man who marketed it, not the people who made it
- Cheese, Muenster (American) — ⭐ an orange coat that is a picture of a rind that isn’t there
- Cheese, Leyden with Cumin — ⭐⭐ the only protected name in this section that contains its own branding mark: Boeren-Leidse met sleutels, with the crossed keys of Leiden stamped into the wheel
⭐ Put the last four batches together and the range of what a protected name can protect is remarkable: a cave (Roquefort) · a raw-milk practice (Boerenkaas) · a seasonal blend (Cabrales) · a word that had already gone generic (Havarti) · a business rather than a place (Cambozola’s trademark) · and a branding iron (Leyden).
⚠ All seven are UNTESTED — I haven’t made a gouda, as above. Which remains an argument for finally doing it, since the only thing I don’t already own is the kettle of hot water.
But two auxiliaries every make on this page needs are written: Cheese Culture, Mesophilic Mother and Cheese Brine, Saturated — and the brine one is the more important of the two, because a plain salt brine takes a good cheese apart in about a week.
Next: hard-pressed cheddar — cheddaring, milling, and salting the curd rather than the wheel.
Comments (0)