Thanks Yoav! I have reduced the temp to 42F....I was working yesterday to reduce the humidity and I am glad that 85% is a good number...I seemed to be able to achieve either 85 or 99....hitting a number in between was giving me fits lol...
Good, Good. Looks good too. I think you may have prevented skin slip just on time. We will see when you open it.
Normally you want it to be at 92% to 95% RH during the cave period to avoid rind slippage and ammoniation. You want the cheese to sit atop a ripening mat that allows a lot of air to come in from the bottom and prevent the cheese from ever sitting in its own whey or suffocating the bottom rind. For that, the mat itself should be elevated in the box on some type of grille or platform.
How do you know your moisture in your aging box is correct?Here's an easy little no-RH-meter-needed guideline. Look at the lid of your aging box:
- If it's dry : Your environment is not moist enough. Solution: Close the lid more or add moist paper towels to the bottom of the box.
- If it collects tiny moisture beads: You are probably within the range of optimal humid conditions.
- If the water beads are large enough to form droplets: (or if you find drops of water that fell on your cheese from the lid). Your environment is overly moist. Solution: Open the lid a bit more.
As the cheese ages it dries and becomes more solid so you will gradually close the lid more and more to maintain the same exact RH. I hope this tip helps.
Regarding wrapping...I had read enough here on the forum to make me think I shouldnt go that route since I only had 3 cams and can keep them in the cave under conditions they need. I figured full aging in the cave until taking them to the regular fridge.
It feels that cheese needs 1-2 more weeks. Keeping it cooler and drier is as effectively as wrapping it. Flip it every 2-3 days and rub it lightly to flatten/pack/dense/thin/firm/elasticize the rind and redistribute mold spores throughout the surface. The flipping allows both sides to breathe evenly and also helps with shifting the minerals evenly throughout the cheese. If your aging works well, you will see signs of geo streaks showing from underneath the white PC rind as you get close to grand opening day.
The cooler temperature we put it in slows down the Geo, but the PC should continue to develop, so they will catch up with one another. You can safely finish the entire aging in the fridge in my opinion. The cave already did its work.
I agree with
JeffHamm, don't be tempted to taste it now. Your cheese may recover but will never be as good as it potentially can be and you get absolutely nothing out of it -it will taste horrible; tough, sour, chalky, weird. It will tell you absolutely nothing about how this cheese is doing and give you no clue to the final taste of the cheese. Let it ripen, wait for the surprise inside the packaging when it's time to open it! It would be like picking from a tree a hard unripe fruit, take a bite from it and then leave it open for 2 weeks to ripen. Allow that cheese tell you its story!
The best thing is to keep making cheese so in a few weeks you will always have something new to taste coming up. Believe me, I know the pain of waiting for cheese. Don't everyone here have it?