I like the goat’s cheese at Rozelle markets but no one sells it up here and I don’t want to go to Rozelle every weekend just for goat’s cheese. So, when I saw a cheese-making book in a catalogue, I decided to make my own. I found some goat’s milk at a local health food store. A Google search revealed lots of people ready to sell me cheese-making equipment.

First you heat the milk. It’s not recommended but being a lazy soul who absolutely hates stirring pots full of seething liquids, I opted to go with the microwave. Works after a fashion, though I’m told I’ll improve my cheese once I learn to love stirring.

Then you add calcium chloride (because processing apparently removes calcium from milk) and culture and rennet. Different cultures are good for different cheeses. Flora danica makes creamy cheese, definitely not to be used for feta. Some cheeses are heated to a high temperature and need thermophilic bacteria. Beginners focus on middle temperature cheeses, needing mesophilic bacteria.

You leave the proto-cheese in its container in hot water to maintain its temperature while it forms curds. For most cheeses that’s around 30-45 minutes. You keep the water temperature constant by adding hot water and removing cooled water. Whilst better suited to obsessives, it isn’t a difficult task. The recipe I had for goat’s cheese required 16 hours for curds to form. Given that I started cooking in the middle of the day, this meant getting up every hour at night to check the temperature. The first time I tried making it, I used the $12 yoghurt maker I bought in Kmart. Much too warm, I ended up with goop. So I invested in an incubator.

A cheese-making incubator is a high-priced, double-walled tub with a lid. It works, more or less, if the night isn’t too cold. Even if it is, cheese is actually quite forgiving of less than ideal conditions. The proto-cheese forms curds anyway and sometimes you wonder why. You can get lucky and find that the mistake you spend the next two days worrying about actually improves the flavour. Though it seldom works a second time and, even if you take notes, isolating the right conditions can be hard. You do need to use fresh goat’s milk. Attempts to make cheese from UHT goat’s milk resulted in liquid yoghurt. Not too bad if you add fruit juice.

My first successful goat’s cheese was dry and crumbly like the ones in Woolies I refuse to buy. The recipe said to leave the cheese to drain for 24 hours on each side. Draining removes the whey when making soft cheeses. For hard cheeses you have to get more forceful. I decided to let my goat’s cheese drain for 12 hours on each side and it tasted as good as the one I bought at the Rozelle markets. It lost flavour when I used frozen goat’s milk. I was making a goat’s cheese every week, rolling it in basil and hot Hungarian paprika and serving it to friends who were free with their compliments. Then winter came and the goats stopped giving.

By then I’d been reading my cheese book and wondered if I could make Swiss cheese or cheddar. Hard cheese requires a press, you squash it at 10 kilos for 30 minutes, then 20 kilos overnight. Or a variation on that, depending on the recipe. I tried haloumi, loading my curds into a strainer and leaving them overnight covered in cheesecloth and a large mixing bowl of water. I added salt and garlic. Lots of people said they liked my haloumi, it wasn’t as salty as the one you buy in the supermarket. Well, cheese salt isn’t cheap. I thought the haloumi was a little rubbery but it wasn’t so bad when I grilled it.

I was sure by now there were lots of mistakes in my cheese-making habits, so I enrolled in a Camembert workshop. Actually, if I’m really being honest, I enrolled because I saw the workshop advertised and thought it would be a really cool idea.

Making Camembert starts out more or less like most cheeses. You heat the milk. You add calcium chloride and culture. You add white moulds and lastly, you add rennet. You always add rennet last because once you add rennet, the milk starts to curd. As long as you don’t use UHT milk. You keep the milk warm until it curds. With Camembert you then stir the curds gently and scoop them into Camembert hoops to drain.

You turn the curds at intervals so the cheese drains evenly. Camembert hoops are open on both sides so you use drying racks and cheesecloth to keep the curds inside. Turning is a challenge. You grab the drying racks (there is one on top and one on the bottom) and you turn as quickly as possible, desperately hoping the hoops don’t slide out and the little blue plastic material I was using in place of cheesecloth doesn’t flap about and let the curds fall out. I lost bits of curd on several attempts before I figured out a way that worked for me.

It takes 24 hours before the curds are firm enough and you can remove them from the hoops. Then you keep the cheese between 12 and 15 degrees while the mould grows. You turn it every couple of days until the cheese is covered in fuzzy white fur, then you wrap it up in paper that allows it to breathe and keep it in the fridge for two weeks. The fuzzy white fur flattens into soft skin, just like the Camembert you can buy in Woolies. The first one I made at the workshop tasted much better than any Camembert I’ve ever bought. The second lot I made at home wasn’t quite as good, but apparently I was the only one who noticed. Either that or I have polite friends.

It was time to tackle the hard stuff so I enrolled in a two day workshop for hard and soft cheeses. We were going to make brie, feta and a type of cheddar called Caerphilly. We stirred the Caerphilly curds for a while and loaded them into presses. The presses looked like rustic one-armed bandits made of very clean pine wood. You load the curds into a mould lined with cheesecloth and place it under the business end of the press. Then you hang 10kg off the arm on the side and wait for 30 minutes. Then you slice off the bits of cheese that have formed into ridges because the cap on the cheese mould was too small. The mould you can’t eat forms in the crevasses at the bottom of ridges, so you have to ensure the surfaces are flat. In cheese-making, mould is only good if you put it there deliberately.

After turning the cheese you wrap it up again and put it back in the press. You hang 20kg off the side-arm and leave it overnight. While waiting, we made brie.

Brie is easier than Camembert because there’s less stirring. The hoops are still open at both ends. The instructor liked you to do things his way so I tried turning the brie the way he turned it, instead of the way I had worked out for myself. The curds gushed out all over the tray on which the hoops and related paraphernalia had been resting. We scooped them back in. The tray had been sterilised so the curds could be rescued. The brie was a little flatter but it continued to develop and is now happily growing mould in a plastic esky in my laundry. I have freezer bricks maintaining the temperature between 12 and 15 degrees and twice a day I replace them with ones from the freezer. I turn the brie every second day. It’s smelling a bit riper than the Camembert did. I don’t know if this is the nature of brie or if that tray wasn’t as sterilised as I thought it was. I’ll know in about three weeks. I think I’m going to try making blue brie. I’ll do this by adding blue mould while scooping the curds into the hoops, then skewering the cheese to give them oxygen. It could be I’ve already made blue brie if that tray wasn’t sterilised. If so, it won’t count. In cheese-making it only counts if you put the mould there deliberately.

Meanwhile back at the workshop we made feta on the second day. This involved more heating of milk, adding of culture and rennet and waiting for curds to form. I’ve made feta before but the mould I used was better for creamy cheeses and my feta tasted wonderful but very unfeta-like. Some friends complained it didn’t have enough bite. This time I’m hoping it will have more bite. Next on my list of cheeses to try are mozzarella and Swiss cheese, the kind with holes in it. I’ve ordered hole-making bacteria through Google.

To make cheese, you spend a lot of time stirring milk because the flavour’s better than if you use a microwave. Then you spend around 45 minutes topping up with hot water to keep the proto-cheese warm while the curds are forming. Then you stir some more, fill up your moulds, wait, turn and apply pressure. You might boil haloumi and you will need to stretch and knead your mozzarella. Eventually you will end up with a fridge full of cheese that isn’t mature enough to eat yet. It’s fun anyway. I’m planning to make every cheese on a cheese platter and serve it at a party. I’d have to plan each cheese separately so they can be ready to eat at the same time. If I can pull it off, I imagine I’ll feel really satisfied.