Smoking is a way to enrich the taste of cheese.

Smoke, by evaporating moisture in the cheese, brings fat to the surface of the cheese. Combined with smoke, fat has preservative properties - as long as the cheese is kept dry.
Smoking gives the cheese an interesting taste and a beautiful golden color. (Note: we paraffinize (wax) the cheese only after smoking.)

The key principle of smoking is weak fire. The cheese should not heat up (which may cause it to lose fat), but hang in a room filled with smoke, where the temperature is not higher than 4.5 degrees C.
The best types of wood for smoking cheese are oak and apple trees.

 

We smoke cheese for 4 to 6 hours, milder species an hour or two longer.
(You can also add liquid smoke to the cheese - at the stage of grinding the grain or during salting. The cheese can also be immersed in a solution of such smoke. We can find instructions on the bottle. However, we personally do not recommend it, because it is a chemical product).

 

 

If you do not have a smokehouse, you can use the following method: on a metal tray you need to put moist wood chips and put the tray on hot coal at the bottom of the garden grill. At a distance from wood chips, put cheese on a metal grate. Cover the grill. Smoke escapes freely through the holes in the grill lid. Make sure that the cheese does not heat up too much (above 32 ° C). The cheese is smoked when its surface takes on a golden brown color.