Author Topic: Aging cheese in halves  (Read 1602 times)

Squeaky wheel

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Aging cheese in halves
« on: October 30, 2014, 03:16:22 PM »
The question: Has anyone tried aging unwaxed half-wheels of cheese?

The background: My brother and I have been making a cheese every week for the last, oh, month and a half.  We age our cheeses in ripening boxes in a wine cooler, except for our waxed colby which has no ripening box.  It's been a good month.  I've learned a lot about managing the humidity in each box, trying to keep the natural rinds somewhere between cracking and going bloomy-slimy.  And our wine cooler is almost at full cheese capacity.
The problem is that we only have one large 9"x9" ripening box, and four 8"x4" boxes.  We can buy more large ripening boxes, but only when we run low enough on other supplies to justify ordering from a supplier.  Until then we can only age one whole natural-rind wheel of cheese at a time.  So we have aged three wheels of cheese in halves.  Obviously this will affect the way the cheese ripens.  We hoped that a healthy rind would form on the cut face if we cut the wheel before brining.

Results so far: The rind on the cut face seems to develop and harden much more slowly than the rind on the rest.  Our three cheeses were a 1-lb jack (already eaten, delicious), a 1-lb havarti (half-eaten, good but salty, other half still aging in wine cooler), and a 2-lb alpine-style tomme (aging at three weeks).  We had no problems with the cut-face rinds on the 1-lb cheeses, but the cut-face rinds on the tomme are cracked and getting worse.  Ever since we dried out the tomme too much and let it crack the cut-face cracks have been getting deeper, wider, longer.  Probably doomed.

I can think of several options:
1. Give up on aging half-wheels of cheese.  Age one large natural-rind wheel at a time until we get bigger boxes.
2. Coopt a tupperware large enough to work as a ripening box.
3. Raise the humidity of the whole wine cooler to ~85%.  Easily attainable - we live in a humid area in the first place.  However, we do not have a hygrometer yet.  We would have to guess at the humidity.
4. Make only brick-shaped cheeses that would fit in the small boxes.

Any suggestions?  Thoughts?  Experiences?

Stinky

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Re: Aging cheese in halves
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2014, 10:28:51 PM »
I would be interested to hear the opinions of experts on this topic as well.