I know we all take a lot of care when aging our cheeses, keeping temperature and humidity in bounds that should produce a good cheese. I teach cheese making workshops periodically, and teach about how to care for a hard cheese, warning about too rapid proteolysis and lypolisys and the off flavors that can be produced. But after my latest class, I started thinking that I don't really know this from experience; I don't know what those flavors taste like. I took the cheese we made at the workshop, and put it on the rack after brining, as usual, but instead of putting it into the cheese cave, I left it there for eight weeks, room temperature and fairly humid through our spring in CT. It grew a pretty good crop of blue mold, which I didn't touch. The mold died back, a few colored patches appeared, and the cheese just sat. I opened it with a couple of food making friends, cut off the ring, and tasted it. It was an extremely tasty cheese, full of complex character. No bitterness at all. No stinkiness, but a sharpness about like Asiago.
This was my modification of the Caerphilly make from 200 Easy Home Made Cheese Recipes by Amrein-Boyse, whith the changes being 4x floc multiplier and a larger curd cut (1"), and shortening the brining time from twenty hours down to twelve.
The milk was p/h store milk, with MM100 starter.