I have 2 batches of cheese, each of which have some ammonia smell running......
Case 1 - First is the shitake Brie make that got neglected over the holidays. It got wet, also it didn't get it's salting right after umolding. it got salted after the shitake mushroom went on and maybe not enough. Of the 4 cheeses a couple of them have some ammonia smell emanating from them.
Case 2 is a batch of Chaource. They are in 3 ripening boxes, 1 of the boxes is a bit bigger (not sure if that has any impact) and it's cheeses are not developing the wrinkles of the geo quite as fast and it smells great! The two smaller boxes, each with several cheeses, have much more wrinkling going on and have some ammonia smell happening.
My questions are, is there anything I can do? And am I correct in believing that this happened because the air in the house is so dry that during their initial draining time the skin dried out before it drained properly? I'm really hoping there's something I can do other than what I'm doing.....taking each cheese out of the box every day, wiping down box and returning cheese. Anything else I can do? And how soon do I wrap these? Will wrapping impact the ammonia development?
Seems from reading threads that colder temps might have prevented this. They've been at between 52 and 57 F. Will lowering temps now be of any help?
Photos attached. Last photo is of Chaource with slower growing geo and that smells great.
Thanks!