I have made a lot of cheeses, but have never had much interest in doing a blue cheese for some reason. Doing surface ripened (bloomy) semi-lactic type cheeses are the ones I really like to make and work the best for my life schedule.
I came across an article with a recipe in the latest Culture magazine for chevre that is a surface ripened blue. The idea immediately got my attention as something new to try. I didn't really use the recipe as published, but more as a guide (I also think the recipe has an error for the salt amount). I used 1 gal. of raw goat's milk to make chevre using my normal recipe. Since I don't have any PR culture, I did follow the magazine article guidelines for harvesting blue from an already made blue cheese. The recommendation was to use a fresh domestically produced blue so that the blue mold is fresher and more likely viable. I harvested the blue mold I could from a local cheese called Whatcom Blue. I mixed the harvested blue with a small amount of the goat's milk and added it to the rest of the goat's milk when it was at temperature (85 deg F).
I drained the resulting curd for 24 hours, salted with 1 tablespoon of salt, then shaped into 4 log shapes. The cheese logs were allowed to dry at room temperature for about three days, then placed in my cave at 50-53 degrees F.
I was a little nervous that the harvested blue might not work. Here is what happened in a week
The recommendation of the article is to age 1-3 weeks.
Susan