Last week I took two cheeses upstate to age them there. I wanted to see the difference between the rind development in the two different locations. My cave in Brooklyn seems to be rather sterile these days since I installed a Coolbot about a month ago.
Although the Coolbot keeps the cave at the desired temperature (56F) and the relative humidity is at 90%, I am afraid the constant air-movement created by the Coolbot has chased out all the microorganisms. At least, this is my guess. Some of the rinds on some cheeses even show little cracks. I find this very disconcerting especially as I was planning to control the climate in the planned cave at the creamery upstate in a similar way. I shall have to do some more research and consulting how to prevent this or at least come up with a better compromise.
The first four pictures are of one of the cheese I took upstate. Notice the beautiful mold development after only one week. The next two pictures are of a cheese after about three weeks in the cave in Brooklyn. No growth at all.
The last two pictures are of a cheese I made in early January. This one has been aging since then in the cave in Brooklyn. As one can see from the rind of this cheese, the cave did contain a wide variety of organisms before the Coolbot was installed.
2 comments:
I don't know anything about making cheese, but I do know the disappointment of a project you were excited about not turning out! So sorry and good luck in figuring out the answer.
This is fascinating. How have your cheese caves been managing in the heat up there the last few weeks?
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