Cheese cave

[feather]

Guess what!? I finally got my cheese cave. A 15 cubic foot old refrigerator that works and it was such a lark that I actually got it for $10, she was offering a sight unseen, moldy, old, no dimensions, no guarantee refrigerator for free. God must have had his hand in this! What I really wanted was something between 9-16 cubic feet and by golly, it was handed to us with our eyes closed.
I knew my cheesy friends would be happy for me.

I have a device too, that hooks up the refrigerator with a thermostat and I can set it for 52 - 55 degrees F, and I'm still under $100. Yippee Cay Yeah!

I hope if I put a pan of water in it, the humidity will go up to 85%. I haven't tried it yet.

I spent hours cleaning out the black, orange, and red mold, a tooth brush with soapy bleach water, to clean all the seals, all the surfaces. It was disgustingly satisfying and now it is bright clean and white. The outside is pocked with a little rust here and there, smudges that couldn't be scrubbed off, and since it will be in the basement, I don't care.

This is a good day! Aged cheeses coming soon, or next year! ha.

[spacecase0]

I have an external thermostat as well,
never thought about converting an extra freezer (I have one) to a cheese cave.
what I fantastic idea

[feather]

Feb 19, 2017 17:32:48 GMT spacecase0 said:

I have an external thermostat as well,
never thought about converting an extra freezer (I have one) to a cheese cave.
what I fantastic idea

Tonight I was starting to set up my thermofeature deal on the refrigerator and it is this one. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V4TJR00/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The thermo part that goes into the fridge, is sealed, so it can also be used for a sous vide. So say you want to hook up your crock pot to ferment some yogurt, you can. Or heat it more to cook like a sous vide. How cool is that? I might have to get a second one. At $28.50 these are down in price compared to what I searched for a year ago.  You can even use it to start a heater in a space that might get close to freezing and freeze your pipes. So it works with cooling devices (like refrigerators) and heating devices (heaters, cookers).

I have our mouths watering with the kinds of cheeses we are going to make. ('we' = me) We need havarti, parmesan, colby, cheddar, cream, sour cream, mozzarella and I'm sure this will keep me busy for weeks or longer.

One of our problem areas around cheese is that when it goes on sale we buy it at less than $3/lb and freeze it. As you already know, after it is frozen, it is more crumbly and less pliable as an eating cheese (versus using it grated or crumbled in food to use it as a cooking cheese). I'm looking forward to making 4 lb blocks and then aging the harder cheeses with a wax coating. I'll cut them in 1 lb quarters to wax so my DS and DH can take out what they want from the aging cheese cave and keep it in the refrigerator upstairs to eat. The wax is washable and remeltable, news to me and good to know.

I learned that if you make cream cheese, you should salt it for savory dishes and leave it unsalted for making cheese cake. It makes sense but I wasn't sure.

I've caught youtube videos by Gavin Webber in AU, and learned so much. There is so much you can't catch from a recipe that you can catch when you watch it being done.

@redfish, I think I saw a post of yours on your blog or a post here, about blue cheese, and Gavin Webber videos also mentions getting the mold from previously made blue cheese. One thing I didn't pick up in the beginning of learning about making cheese was that blue cheese doesn't take years to make, it takes a month or so--I had no idea.

In my learning, I found a place to download a cheese log to make my 'cheese diary' to be more consistent. I don't know really if this will be the way to go. I'll know after a few weeks if this form I found is worthwhile. curd-nerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/CurdNerdCheeseLog.pdf

In the videos mentioned, he shows his failures as much as his successes which helps a lot. Some of his videos he shows 'tasting' a particular cheese and while I may be afraid that anything out of the ordinary is bad, or that an unexpected event in life has caused a little neglect, he has shown me that it isn't always bad but a different mold may have cross contaminated it or there was too much humidity and how to recognize these problems. He uses 'cheese ripening boxes' in his cheese cave. He uses them to keep the humidity right and watch the draining. I've found and purchased almost everything to make cheese but I'm still looking for ripening boxes which are just plastic boxes of the right size with sealing lids.

Thanks for reading my long descriptions...can you tell that I'm happy?

[feather]

@redfish, I appreciate your enthusiasm! Repeat yourself (if you are) all you want. I feel like I've jammed so much new information into my brain, I'm forgetting parts of what I've learned and will need reminders as I go along.

When you talk about the 'pink mold'. Do you think it is the same stuff as the 'breven type' 'linens' (I have no idea what the spelling should be.) mold (that is used in brick and muenster) that this Gavin Webber mentions in this video as a 'red mold'? (I don't know if you have bandwidth to watch videos.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdHZ8NbZWE0

In the video he was making a white mold, and blue mold type cheese called Fourme D'Ambert cheese and I think he wanted a blue type cheese. Then at a couple months he wrapped it in foil and aged it another month. He says that he believes that the cheese was cross contaminated by the 'red mold' because when he opened it, it was very fragrant (stinky) and it had a red or pink mold on the outside while the blue and white molds didn't grow very much. He still found it edible but not the blue cheese he was expecting. He said he thought that when he wrapped it in foil to keep another month, that it was probably ready to eat, or at its peak. He was going to keep it to eat for him and his family.

In another video, he says something about most molds being okay unless they are a black or black grey mold.

In another video he shows the bandaged cheddar with mold and not to worry about it at all. Just like you said.

I picked up some sushi mats to rest the cheese on and by the time I get ripening boxes of some type, I'll have a mish mash of equipment including some ice cream containers. I have a large round ice cream container that might work for a brining container.

Milk went on sale (pretty amazing) for $1.99/gallon with coupon, so I'm making a 4 gallon recipe of Havarti today. Then if all goes well, we'll take advantage of the sale again tomorrow.

I need to bring the milk inside to warm to room temperature to start. I need to boil all my equipment, so while necessary, its going to take some time to get that done.

[feather]

@redfish, Harvesting sweaty smelly teenager foot odor for the use of cheesemaking....not going to happen.

About blue cheese--

A whiff of ammonia upon unwrapping is typical, though it should dissipate after five minutes. Overripe blues may develop acetone flavors (like nail polish remover), which you should avoid.

www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/blue-cheese-101-roquefort-stilton.html

That acetone smell--is mostly associated (at least from my reading), in wines when there is too much acidity (If I'm remembering right) and sometimes an off flavor in milks, but in cheese it is 'over the hill', or past prime.

I guess I'll have to figure out, what exactly do you do when your cheese is ready to take out of the aging cave and eat, and it shouldn't continue to age? I'm guessing it goes in the refrigerator to eat and extra can be frozen (but lose it's nice texture by doing that). Cheddar, parmesan, romano, being long aging cheeses can stay in the cheese cave indefinitely.

[feather]

Cheese is a always a science experiment, you never know what might show up the party. That's part of why I love it.

I like that too! When I finish this havarti I'm contemplating the place in the house with the least mold spores for the drying period. The basement--nope, too many mold spores. I'm guessing the best place for drying is on the south side of the first floor, away from the sunshine, so in the shade in the living room, on a book shelf.

I'm boiling the cheese pot/roaster, and everything I'll use. The milk is warming up.

This was an interesting article about really really old cheese, by accident.
www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2012/10/08/the-oldest-edible-cheese-in-the-world

Did you ever notice that really old sharp long aged cheddar has this crystal structure that you bite into when you eat it. It crunches slightly. I didn't know what that was. I thought maybe salt crystals, it is similar to salt, but it is amino acid structures. Amino acid structures, naturally formed, are the umami taste. You can see amino acid structures on the outside of aged cheeses and they exist inside it as well. They look like salt structures, a flat plate on the surface with a crystal sticking up like salt or possibly salt with these amino acids involved in them.

Umami tastes are the tastes that are not easily describable, not salty, not bitter, not sweet, not sour, something else, more meaty. Meatiness flavor is something that comes from other things, like fish sauce, anchovies, mushrooms, red wine, Worcestershire sauce, ....some cheeses.

That is awesome that you had a long aged cheese. I don't think my fridge is old enough to lose any cheese in the back. And if I could find a barter partner that had an overflow of milk, that would be great to try, cow, sheep, or goat. Time will tell, if I find someone like that.