On the weekend I decided to try out David Asher's technique for cam/brie from his book The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. Unfortunately, I haven't got hold of any kefir grains yet, so I'm just using regular cultures. But I followed the rest of his recipe, which differs quite a lot to my usual one.
The main differences between David's recipe and the one I usually follow are:
1. Only geotrichum candidum is used to ripen the cheese. No fuzzy white penicillium candidum.
2. Surface salting of the cheese instead of brining. (I haven't salted a cheese since I did my cheesemaking course over a year ago, so hopefully I get it right!).
3. You make a wash by taking your leftover whey and adding salt, and then wash the cheese every second day (from memory) for a week. This encourages the geo and discourages everything else.
I only made a batch of two, as I didn't want to be wasting milk if it didn't work out. Below you can see the cheeses just after I have rubbed some salt onto them. It was interesting to watch the effect the salt had on the shape of the cheese as it pulled moisture of it. They kind of went a bit wonky, with the top contracting more than the bottom. This has mostly been corrected now after a flip, but the sides are still rounded and bulging out a little bit. In comparison, when I brine a cam they tend to retain their shape and straight sides and just shrink a bit. I'm guessing this is because the salt is evenly distributed around it.
The cheeses have now been moved into my cheese fridge at 10C, and I'll commence the washing tonight after I get home from work.
I have a feeling these guys are going to take longer to ripen than a cam that is covered in p.candidum. David mentions 2 months in the book, which is double the time that it takes cams made using my usual recipe to ripen! On the negative side, that means it'll take longer before I can eat them. On the positive, I'm thinking the longer ripening might allow more complexity of flavour to develop before it hits the gooey stage. Only time will tell.