Aging box?

[NCBaker]

Hello - I am planning to make my first camembert. 

I am reading about aging bins and wonder if they are necessary if I am planning to use small dorm size frige.

Is it primarily for moister control?

Do you line the bottom of the bin with a drying mat?

Thanks
NCBaker

[OzzieCheese]

Hi,  Here is how I make mine - they come out by all accounts quite well

http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,14727.0.html

Drop me a PM if you have any more questions -happy to help

-- Mal

[Andrew Marshallsay]

Is it primarily for moister control?

Do you line the bottom of the bin with a drying mat?

Hi NC.
I use similar containers to the ones Mal uses. Yes, they are for moisture control as you are not likely to have high enough humidity in your fridge. I certainly don't here in Adelaide; especially during the summer.
The containers I use come with a rack in the bottom.

[awakephd]

I would say that the ripening boxes are a necessity, even in a small fridge. The problem is that when the compressor is running, the humidity will drop rapidly. The ripening box will keep things nice and even.

That said, it is possible to move from the ripening boxes to cheesepaper once you have achieved the desired coverage of PC. I ripen my "Malemberts" (yes, Mal is THE guide for me on this style!) in ripening boxes in the cheese cave for a week or so, until I get full PC coverage, then I wrap in cheesepaper and move to the cold fridge. This does not give better results than continuing to use the ripening boxes; it just saves space ... which helps to keep my wife happy.

[Kern]

.....then I wrap in cheesepaper and move to the cold fridge. This does not give better results than continuing to use the ripening boxes.......

What moving to the cold fridge will do is slow down the ripening so that one can use a couple of gallons of milk and make four cams and not have to eat them all in the same week once ripe.  I've found that pulling one little wheel out of the cold fridge, putting in back in the 55F cave for a couple of days and then moving it to room temperature for a couple of days will produce a beautifully ripened cam.  Meanwhile, the other three in the cold fridge are standing firm awaiting their call to active duty.     Doing it this way stretches the cam eating out to about a month or so with each batch.   

[awakephd]

Kern, I hadn't thought about doing a final ripening in the cave. I shall give that a try!

[Kern]

For my cams the cave is an intermediate stop in the ripening process.  The final ripening occurs on the counter at room temperature for about a day.   To get a little technical here, ripening cheeses kinetically follow other first order chemical reactions:  That is, increase the temperature by 10C (18F) and the reaction rate will double.  Take a cheese out of a 38F fridge and put it in a 74F room and it will ripen roughly four times as fast.  Put another way if it takes 30 days to ripen in the cold fridge it will only take a week on the counter top.   

There is another factor here also.  The paste viscosity will drop as the temperature increases.  A paste that hardly flows at cold fridge temps will readily ooze at room temp.  This does not mean the cam is ripe because paste at the center may still be somewhat firm. 

Finally, ripeness is a matter of taste.  I am not a huge fan of cams with strong odor that ooze out all over the place.     Others may think that the cam is not ripe until this occurs.   

[mikey687]

I've found that pulling one little wheel out of the cold fridge, putting in back in the 55F cave for a couple of days and then moving it to room temperature for a couple of days will produce a beautifully ripened cam.  Meanwhile, the other three in the cold fridge are standing firm awaiting their call to active duty.

What a fantastic idea!

I don't want to hijack this thread but I've just wrapped some cams yesterday that are the first ones I've managed to produce that don't look like a total disaster. I may have wrapped too early but I chickened out! I'm struggling with how you store them in the cold fridge though, and could do with some advice.

I've just stacked them in a box along with the other cheeses we are eating and I'm still flipping them every day. Is this all I need to do, or would they be better with a bit of space around them still?

And how long do you leave them in the fridge before you can start bringing them back into "active duty"? Do I still have to wait 2 weeks or so to let the enzymes do their thing and then start pulling them out?

Picture below is just before I wrapped them in cheese paper.

[Kern]

Mikey,

I keep them in the cold fridge until the edges start to get soft.  At this point they respond well to warming in the cave.  Here I wait until they are soft on the sides and about half to two-thirds of the way into the center.  (They ripen from the outside in so the center is always last to soften).  At this point I'll move them to room temperature and open them in no more than 24-48 hours.  You'll adjust this for your cheeses as the rate of softening depends somewhat on the pH at salting.  I try to go down to between 4.4 and 4.6.

I'd say a well made Cam takes about 6 to 8 weeks to ripen after salting.  (Fully whitened in the 55F cave and then wrapped in good cheese wrapping paper and moved to the cold fridge.)  This gives the paste time to develop flavor in the usual fashion.  If you salt at too high a pH (>4.8 or more) they will ripen too quickly and the paste will be kind of bland.

Kern

[mikey687]

Thanks Kern, that was really useful.

I have no idea what the pH was of the cheese as the pH meter stopped working at 30 hours into drainage. I had a very slow acid development with these and at 40 hours I was flying blind but the drainage had stopped so I moved to brining.

At 30 hours, the pH of the whey was 5.2, but I read last week that the cheese would have been more acidic so maybe I was measuring the wrong thing and I'm wondering now if I left them a bit too long. Everything after the brining seems to have gone really well, so I'm hopeful.

Mikey

[awakephd]

Kern, I tried your suggestion of moving the cams back to the "cave" before consuming. Wow -- what a great suggestion! I like my cams gooey but not completely runny. The cave temp is just perfect -- I find I like it best straight from the cave rather than sitting out, though the latter is good as well.

Interestingly, I feel like I'm getting less ammonia whiff this way than I sometimes get leaving it in the cold fridge. Not sure if that is something I did differently with this particular make, or if that is a happy addendum to the final cave ripening ... ? Clearly, more experimentation is needed.

FWIW, I have been ripening my cams in the cold fridge until they start to feel squishy all the way to the center. At this point, there is still an inner core that is not quite converted to the gooey stage. After moving one of these to the cave for a couple of days, it is gooey pretty much all the way through. And delicious!!

[Kern]

At 30 hours, the pH of the whey was 5.2, but I read last week that the cheese would have been more acidic so maybe I was measuring the wrong thing and I'm wondering now if I left them a bit too long. Everything after the brining seems to have gone really well, so I'm hopeful.

I've seen recommendations for Cam pH's as low as 4.4 so you are probably fine.  Geotricum eats lactic acid so I think that a lower pH Cam would simply take longer to ripen than a higher pH Cam everything else being equal.  The drop in pH sets the stage for the P. Candidum to do its thing.  The Cam softens because the pH rises above the isoelectric point of the milk proteins and when this happens the proteins become water loving and everything goes gooey. 

About a month ago I made some Cam from a cheap P&H milk just to see what it would be like.  My final pH stalled at 4.84 and after a few hours of sitting there I decided it was not going to go any lower and salted it.  It did its "Cam thing" and I wrapped it at about 10 days and put in in the cold fridge.  I noticed that it was getting soft faster than the last batch so I pulled one wheel out and opened it after a day in the cave and a day on the counter.  The rind was perfect but the paste rapidly leaked out.  It was a white sticky liquid with a mild, but nondescript taste.     Obviously, it had not had the time for the paste to develop a cam-like flavor.  I attribute this to the high(er) pH at salting.   

I think a cam needs about six weeks of cold fridge to develop good flavor and you need to have a pH at salting around 4.5-4.6 to get this.  I'd error on the low side and will go to 4.4 on my next batch if I can get it.