Hi,
Well done on your colby make and good notes. These will be very helpful to you in the future, trust me.
Anyway, when I was pre-cave, I used ice in a cooler to age my cheese. I put in two or three 2-litre milk jugs that were frozen solid. I swapped these twice a day (morning and evening). I put a thermostat in the cooler, and this seemed to keep the temperature around 10 C, which is ideal for aging a wide variety of pressed cheeses. New Zealand is quite humid, so the cooler would get a lot of condensation, which would drip down to the bottom, so the cheese had to be placed on top of containers / boards, etc, to keep them from sitting in puddles of water. I would also wipe the water out. Keeping an eye on things means this can work, but you are tied to maintenance (it's bad to forget to change the ice as things warm up, etc). Your experience will depend a lot on the local conditions, if you have very dry air, you may not find condensation a problem but rather keeping the humidity up. Adjust and adapt the information you find here to get it to work for you.
At some point, you will get a less effortful cave, and then you can play around with more cheeses. Your regular fridge will be too cold, and aging will effectively stop. So, you need to find somewhere that remains around 10 C, and is humid (Basements can be a good place to find cool nooks and crannies).
Now, here's a few suggestions. If you're going to use the floc method, ignore the "clean break" test. You had a 12 minute floc time, which is great. If you were following the suggestion of 3x floc, then 36 minutes is when you cut, not when you are expecting a clean break (although with raw milk, or low heat pasturized creamline milk, you probably would get one, the point of the floc method is to measure what is happening and standardize based upon that. The floc time tells you the rate at which the rennet is working on the milk, and the floc multiplier is there to tell you when to cut to obtain desired moisture content). Now, you cut at 45 minutes, which is closer to a 4x floc. That means your curds will retain more moisture than had you cut at 36. Colby is a moist cheese, so this is fine. It also means this cheese will probably age more quickly, and isn't going to be ideally suited for long term aging. Again, that works well for you.
The extra salt will probably make this a bit saltier, but not inedible. Personally, what I do is before I start making a cheese based upon a recipe I've copied from the board or else where, I go over all the amounts and double check to sure it is scaled to the make I'm doing, and write them at the top of my notes. I do this when I first find the make (since I usually make 11 litre makes these days, I just scale all notes to 11 litres). That way, when I get around to making it, it is already tailored to me. I copy makes out of books I have and do the same, rather than marking in the book, because at some point I might increase my make size, etc. Also, I can adjust the presentation format of the procedure to be good for me.
I've not made colby, so I can't comment on the procedure and I'm not sure how long it takes to age. However, with a washed curd, I suspect in 2 or 3 weeks, it will not have developed much flavour and this is likely to require 2 or 3 months. I think caerphilly would be an ideal cheese for you. It tends to the salty side (which your partner will enjoy) and it is ready quick (it is ready to eat in two or three weeks). It's also not a particularly difficult cheese to make. Check the cheddar boards, you'll find a lot of people are making caerphilly. There's 3 make procedures out there, and all produce a nice, tangy, tasty cheese.
Anyway, I would suggest aging your cheese out at least a month before vac. bagging it. Maybe even a bit longer. If you want to keep the rind clear, after a week, start wiping it down with a strong brine (leaving the face that goes down dry so it's not sitting on a wet surface). It might start to "muck up" a bit, and you'll be rubbing a slimy, schmier around. You can then back off to wiping two or three times a week. This will protect your cheese. Or, you can just let the moulds grow and brush them back. When you eat it, just cut off the rind. This works well, and the moulds work on the cheese to flavour it. I tend to do the latter, but I know how wild moulds are hard to get used to when you first start, so again, do what feels right to you.
I hope that helps. I think you'll be quite pleased with your cheese, but give it time to age out properly. It will be worth it. (A cheese to you for your excellent start, by the way)
- Jeff