Just tried a 9 year old cheddar…magnificent! It is to 5 year cheddar what 5 year cheddar is to “medium” cheddar. QtM, now that I have friends in Milwaukee, I’m planning to raid your cheddar chest! And you can make me an expresso with your fancy machine while I’m using your bidet!
Just polishing up some 8 year old stuff at present, nice and yummy. I’ve got some 13 year old and some 20 year old still in reserve. I’m sort of off espresso now, doing cold brew coffee instead. You can use the guest suite potty, no bidet. Sorry.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of security measures do you take around the cheese locker?
I’ve always assumed an extensive trapline of mousetraps.
Hmmm, I wonder what 1000 mousetraps on a trampoline would look like if they all went off at once.
Isolated rural low crime living, mainly. Plus an underground walk in vault.
I have always preferred a good aged cheddar - those little explosions of flavor when you bite one of the tiny bits of crystal is amazing. I swear I would buy it in a shaker if I could get it. I don’t understand why for snacking people like boring bland American Cheese … we buy a tiny brick of 5 year cheddar when we are feeling especially rich. Normally we just go for the usual grocery store extra sharp.
I would love to have a cheese vault - then we could buy that whole 40 pound wheel of parmesan we saw at the commissary before they cut it into small wedges. I learned to make cheese usong the cheddar process because we like the curds when they are fresh enough to squeek, but if we had the space we could actually make a wheel of cheese and age it properly =)
I have always preferred a good aged cheddar - those little explosions of flavor when you bite one of the tiny bits of crystal is amazing. I swear I would buy it in a shaker if I could get it. I don’t understand why for snacking people like boring bland American Cheese … we buy a tiny brick of 5 year cheddar when we are feeling especially rich. Normally we just go for the usual grocery store extra sharp.
I would love to have a cheese vault - then we could buy that whole 40 pound wheel of parmesan we saw at the commissary before they cut it into small wedges. I learned to make cheese usong the cheddar process because we like the curds when they are fresh enough to squeek, but if we had the space we could actually make a wheel of cheese and age it properly =)
Moderating: I moved this to CS.
I’d like to see brand names and vendors with respect to these here cheddars.
I want to go on a cheese tasting tour of Wisconsin. Right now.
Oddly enough, very aged cheddar is hard to find in the UK. The itch for ultra-flavoured cheese is scratched in different ways eg rind washing
Bog butter, found in peat bogs dating back to 1 or 2 C.E., has been found, and the taste described, so someone has tasted it.
I don’t know how ancient cheese can be found, but if it exists at all, it can’t have gone bad – weird flavor maybe, but not bad.
Every Whole Foods Market I’ve been in carries a good variety of cheeses from Neal’s Yard. Colston Basset Stilton, Shropshire Blue, Montgomery’s Cheddar, Keen’s Cheddar, Gorwyd Caerphilly, Cashel Blue and Hawes Wensleydale are all one’s I can recall seeing in the last year.
No need to move from your comfy chair. Just have Renard’s ship you some. Right now. It works best in the winter, as they don’t have to use dry ice like in the summer.
at Cedar Valley they generally have 8-12 different cheeses to sample at any one time, along with fresh curd samples and string cheese to taste. Stop by some time.
Aaaaaaaaaand… I’m on Renards site now. TWENTY DOLLARS FOR DELIVERY? Well, I doubt the five-year-old cheddar I’m ordering probably won’t care about the long delivery. 
Also ordering chocolate fudge cheese, almond Swiss spread and low-sugar apple butter.
Thanks for the site, Musicat!
So, does anyone know of a good cheese shop in the San Jose area? I haven’t found a good one around here and this thread is making me hungry.
Where on earth do you find this stuff?
DC area - and the oldest Cheddar I’ve ever found was 7 year old stuff - either at Trader Joe’s or Wegman’s, I forget which. And even that’s rare, though I can usually find a 5-year product at Wegman’s.
So we mostry stick with Cabot extra sharp, which is toddler-age (2 years) from Costco. It may not be old enough to attend middle school, but is an example of Costco providing a pretty darned acceptable product.
I rather like the Coastal cheddar you can buy at Costco. It may not be in the same league as some of the cheeses being rhapsodized about above, but the price is right and the taste is tangy. And it does have those lovely crunchy crystals that make an aged cheddar so satisfying.