Kenneth Coble muttered....



Anyway, $0.02 more from my corner. BTW, Olivers, what part of the US
are you from? Around here hoop pretty much means yellow, and what you
(and lots of other people) call hoop cheese we call Farmer's cheese.
Just curious, I'm starting to wonder about the geographic distribution
of this terminology...


Central Texas, but have lived and worked over much of the US except for the
Northwest, years of it in Florida. I'd never encountered "hoop" cheese as
anything other than a white "young" cheese, while what you're describing
sort of travels under the Cheddar, Colby, Longhorn or Rat (Trap)
designation (sort of depending on strength of flavor, but even that can
vary and today's US Cheddar is pretty mild "Wisconsin" style except for
gourmet varieties and some places like cabot which mass market sharper
cheese).

In the US, red or black rinds on "Cheddar" used to be indicators of longer
aging, but red seems simply ornamental these days.

TMO