Humidity Problems

[Duntov]

A few stats first.  I am using a 32 bottle wine cooler as the cave.  I also have an external controller to regulate temperature and humidity.  It uses a combo sensor (probably cheap) that runs into the cave.  The humidifier is a  mini USB type that uses a drinking bottle and is placed inside the cave.

My problem is that my cheeses are wet all the time causing the rinds to get pasty and soft.  I have the humidifier set on it lowest position but it still puts out a pretty good fog that then condenses on everything.  When the cooler kicks on, the water droplets turn to ice on the inside walls.  A side effect is that temps close to the wall are much lower than those in the middle of the shelves.

From doing some reading, the sensors do go bad and become inaccurate quite frequently that requires replacing.  I really don't want to get into this spiral of replacing components to get the accuracy I need for aging.  I am now considering just using aging boxes with salt and/or KCl slurries.  This would also help my cross contamination I would think and also make it easy to move my cheeses such a Camembert to a cooler fridge easily while maintaining humidity.  The only downside I can think of is that I will have to air out the boxes frequently.  Larger boxes would also help.

So, should I go low tech?

[Gregore]

I have never used a wine cooler but assuming it uses a TEC then it should hold humidity well with out much extra moisture being add other than the cheese breathing .

I think if you have moisture condensing on every thing the humidity might be way too high

[jwalker]

I use a stainless steel pan about 1 1/2 inches deep with coarse salt and water , always keeping it topped up , it is cheap and reliable.

I'm using a wine cooler as well.

You have to stay on it though , as the salt tends to precipitate out of the water and form rock crystals on the sides of the pan occasionally.

Give it a try , if it doesn't maintain a high enough humidity alone , you can roll up a small cloth and place it in the center of the pan as a wick , to help with evaporation.

[Duntov]

I believe my excess humidity is due to two problems.  This time of year my garage stays in the low to mid 90F range.  Whenever I open the fridge door everything instantly condenses onto the cheeses.  So part of the problem is human error in that I tend to open the fridge too often for flipping the cheeses and to just check on them. 

I don't have room to move the fridge into the house so I needed a different solution.  I tried placing a large KCl bath in the fridge but it just didn't do the job.  So I purchased some restaurant 1/2 size poly-carbonate trays in different depths along with lids and trays.  I made up a KCl solution for each one.  The humidity in each container is now stabilized between 85-88% with the temp at 55F.  The fridge is now free of condensation and my cross contamination is also under control.  I may stay with this method going forward but a larger fridge would be much better since the containers take up more space.

A couple of cheeses suffered during this escapade including my 4 gallon Stilton and I hope they recover.

[Fritz]

I just mentioned in another thread, that I use a computer fan (connected to a 12VDC adapter) and on a single wall timer that turns on the micro mister mini humidifier and fan at the same time (placed behind humidifier blowing at it) every 2 hours for 1/2 hr... Holds my cave at 80% RH keeping the door closed. My "wet" cave issue, similar to yours, went away. I have 3 wine coolers sort of similar to yours. The timer model/style has set pins for every 1/2 hour over 24 hrs for programming... Hope this helps