OK, long (I suspect). Just some random and likely rambling thoughts on rind strategies.
Specifically, in my instance, when making hard alpines.
Issues of what flora actually exist, what flora survive through affinage (difference between concentrations at beginning and end), and difference between strains extant on surface of cheeses v. what species and strains are commercially available.
What does one do?
1. In attempting to see what is actually
on a given cheese's mature rind. A single example: the accepted wisdom that it is brevibacteria, the "red bacteria" such as b. linens, that are primary in the cascade for a good, alpine rind. It is becoming clear that they likely aren't. Others - other coryneforms such as arthrobacters (commercially, only one I know is A. nicotanae), corynebacteria, brachybacteria, and staphylococcus (commercially only one I know is S. xylosus) - have been found to play a far more important role than previously conceived, with the linens taking more of a backseat.
2. Presuming a certain overall goal. In my case, not trying to replicate a cheese - not trying to essentially be a satellite for Abondance cheese on my (eventual) farm - but rather relying on a certain flavor, texture profile - Abondance form, more of a forward, meaty, animal, "piquant" Beaufort forwardness - heavily steeped in a certain tradition of animal husbandry and cheesemaking practice while embracing one's own terroir, and organoleptic aims; in other words, relying on tradition and a certain cheese as a strong foundation, while expressing one's own place and practice.
3. One can pursue one or a melange of 3 essential strategies:
- Attempt to buy an alchemist's brew of pure culture strains, or blends of strains, as a means to truly engineer a rind that fits one's criteria, or one can see these as a means to early "seed" one's rind, or even cave, for development as things progress.
- Prepare a morge, anywhere from a liquid brine to a clay-slip, mixed slurry consistency, from the rinds of desired cheeses and salt brine of certain concentrations. Use these to again develop rinds and the cave environment.
- Depend entirely on one's own "terroir," the mix of ambient flora in soil, the parlor, cheesemaking plant and cave, etc., to create a natural rind that is a good expression of one's own make techniques and area.
There are no pure forms, obviously. One can buy entirely pure strains only to have, without knowing, almost nothing of these left at the end of a mature cheese due to comparative advantage of autothochnous (indigenous, not imported or descending from imported species or strains) species or strains. One can use an "imported" rind, making a morge slurry, and find oneself in the same situation. Or one can buy pure strains, and even in a "pure environment," (possible only as a model, can't exist in practice), accepted wisdom may be completely off. As in the example above, it is increasingly clear how little brevibacteria may play in the rinds of hard alpines, relative to other genera.
What one does ultimately depends on what one is after. It seems there is a wide latitude of play, depending on the cheese and cheese type. The possibilities are limitless. One can take the "worst" p/h milk and with a considered blend of bought cultures and an engineering viewpoint, produce a delicious cheese. Not superlative, in my opinion - which can only come from raw milk - but delicious. The miracle of modern chemistry.
Or, as in the case of tomme de grise, easy enough to do some scrapings of some rind and it truly aggressive molds, let 'er rip, and get a decent result. A simpler rind community, some aggressive species, and you've a decent shot at a good result.
In my case, hard alpines, I think the parameters are more tightly defined. And given the community complexity, perhaps more difficult.
It is starting to become clear to me how little use it is to buy pure strains, hoping to emulate a given cheese. Again, for the two reasons mentioned above, basically: What is actually on those cheeses? When is it on them - beginning, middle, end? Can a melange of bought cultures provide even a "springboard" for future development, given natural cascading - or is it useless, either because the 5-6 strains used in a blend can nowhere approximate the potentially hundreds of strains on a mature, complex smear cheese, or because the cascade cannot be approximated, again due to competition?
I know I may likely be "guilty" than many here, of hoping to create a cheese by extremely reductionist thinking, more so in my earlier experiments than now. I attempted to define a kind of ratio of genera, from my reading in the literature, buy whatever was available from among those genera, mix it in and hope for the best. An expensive proposition, at best, and likely an utterly useless exercise at worst. No smear rind can be reduced to a simple few species or strains. It just doesn't happen, and using PLA, for example, as a "Savoie" smear is at best an anemic, distant cousin to what exists in nature, in the rinds of the emulated, "mother" cheeses.
A closer approximate, I would think, would be to deal with companies who actually supply blends in the area of origin - generally not available elsewhere, to my knowledge. If we can obtain "PLA" in the States, Agroscope, for example, provides several blends according to Euro cheese types. An example would be its "CMS 704," a mix of coryneforms (brevibacteria, arthrobacteria, corynebacteria), and yeast (debaromyces). (Interestingly, no Geo). The description given for the blend (translated), is:
Culture for the development of morge, giving a reddish color, formation taking place more rapidly than in the case of CMS 702.
(702 has no corynebacteria, and relatively more of both arthrobacter and debaromyces). The description further reads,
For semi-hard cheeses of morged rinds, mountain cheeses.
In terms of what's available to us in the States, note PLA contains no corynebacteria, but presumably a high concentration of brevibacteria, which is accepted wisdom. But may be entirely wrong, as it seems increasingly apparent, if attempting to closely produce from the original.
Given concerns (warranted or not) about listeria and other pathogenic cross-contamination, perhaps this is the best many Euro producers can do, anymore; that a true morge process, using older cheeses to wash newer cheeses, is proving more and more difficult. It would be interesting to hear from Alp or others with their pulse on current practice, how many producers rely on such blends for their practice, now.
The desire to use a native rind in a true morge is itself difficult. What lives on a "mature" rind from a cheese that has been dried out, handled, packaged, transported cannot be said to be anywhere close to a rind from a mature cheese in an actual cave, used in a traditional morge process. Additionally, the more hands and the more steps involved between the maturing cheese and the final, purchased wedge, the greater potential there is for adulteration, contamination, even pathogenic contamination. Given that the morge process itself raises some concerns in this way, this isn't an inconsequential consideration.
One's native terroir - its climate, flora, geology, all the factors that make it "place," one could argue, is always best. And perhaps ideally, one does what one's "mother country" has done over the centuries of its collective wisdom. Produce St. Nectaire in the Auvergne, Camembert in Normandy, Beaufort in the Beaufortain. Or _________ in _________. One isn't engineering anything - one fosters what happens naturally, as well as what makes best sense in the marketplace (sometimes, like 1000's of years of "sense," such as "no small, stinky softies at 1500 meters altitude).
What does one want? What's possible?
For me, more and more, I'm tossing strategy (1). It's just too far from what I think is effective in both a cost-benefit sense, and in the sense that these spare blends or pure strains are so far off what exists in nature, as to be wholly unsatisfactory.
Acknowledging the dangers inherent in (2), I'm deep in the midst of pursuing a mix of strategies (2) and (3). The jury is very much out, here. Obviously impossible to do
in vacuo, as with all things in nature. I'm using actual rind portions of both Beaufort and Abondance alpage makes, using these to seed my cave, establish cheeses, as well as work the affinage of my own cheeses. I can't do anything about my native flora, except provide a good home according to certain environmental guidelines. So far, the result has been sluggish, and less than thrilling. Any perceptible rind development has been, with my oldest cheese now approaching 3 months, nowhere near the beautiful, russet brown such as seen here, in Abondances. Credit to Joseph Paccard, from their Abondance Fermier caves:
-but I think this is my choice, for how I want to go forward. Basically, as little bought culture strains as possible, anywhere in the process; starter culture from raw milk, secondary cultures same, a good seed from bought cheese rinds, my own nurturing to develop my own interpretations. I don't think it will be easy to please inspectors, here....but I can't really embrace any other way.
Rambling, I know. Just a hope it sparks further thought and discussion, if people would like to jump in.